TrueHDR: A Nifty Photo App for the iPhone 3GS

The Disappearing City

HDR Backyard

Safety First

At the suggestion of my friend Automatt, I’ve spent the last few days playing around with the TrueHDR, a $1.99 HDR photography app for the iPhone 3GS. You can see some of the results in the images above.

To be clear: I’m not usually a fan of high dynamic range (HDR) imaging. As a general rule, I find that it is rampantly overused and often *cough cough* kind of gimmicky. Indeed, the incidence of HDR abuse is so high that I’ve been known to grumble that the technology should perhaps require a government-issued license to use.

But in the case of the iPhone, which offers few adjustments to the camera’s basic settings, a tool like TrueHDR offers a simple way to compensate for some of those limitations. To see what I mean, let’s try a side-by-side comparison of the same scene. The top image here was taken with the regular iPhone 3GS camera, while the bottom image used TrueHDR:

Unadultered Image

Good Morning

My bottom line: TrueHDR generates a relatively subtle HDR effect, it’s extremely easy to use, and (most of all) I really like some of the photos I’ve taken with it.

photos by Todd Lappin / Telstar Logistics

Todd Lappin
Todd Lappin