Athentech Imaging makes everything Perfectly Clear
Monday, November 9, 2009 at 10:00AM | Glyn Evans I'm not sure how I missed this app, but thanks to reader Matthew Chappell I may have found the perfect iPhone application to correct those exposure and colour imbalances were all familiar with.
Perfectly Clear is billed as your 1 click solution to fix your dark, washed-out, flat, and fuzzy looking iPhone photos, but how well does it stand up against the competition. Read on to find out what I think about this app, and how I think it compares to the competition.
The App
Launch the app and from the home/splash screen you are presented with three options:
Open Picture - which as the name suggests allows you to select and load a photo from the camera roll/photo album- Take Picture - this allows you to launch the camera app, take a photo and import it straight in to the app
- More Info - this tells you about the app, displaying the same information as per the developers AppStore description
Once you have selected your source and loaded the photo the app auto-corrects your shot, instantly showing a before and after effects of your photo via a vertical split screen view, which can be adjusted by sliding your finger left or right. If you are happy with the auto-sorrection then you need do nothing more than select save, however if you want to make further adjustments to you photo, then tapping the right hand side of the screen will reveal the following options:
- EXPOSURE: Perfect Exposure is the most important correction and forms the core for all other corrections. Perfect Exposure optimizes the light in every pixel. This patented approach corrects the image to emulate how your eye gathers light thereby replicating what you saw at the time of taking the photo.
- CONTRAST: Increasing the shadows in a photo helps reveal the textures and shapes in the scene. This provides visual cues of the 3D world in a 2D photograph. Perfectly Clear optimizes the contrast in each pixel, choosing the right amount of shadow to provide those 3D cues without losing details in those shadows, giving you a photograph that is very eye-pleasing with lots of “punch”.
- COLOR VIBRANCY: Due to the linear nature of digital camera sensors, when more light is gathered, the sensors frequently become over saturated and color vibrancy is lost. That’s why your images often look like a newspaper that has been left out in the sun. Perfectly Clear’s color vibrancy correction puts the rich colors back into your photo.
- SHARPEN: Perfectly Clear’s proprietary sharpening is a series of very powerful and unique algorithms developed to deliver a crisp looking photo that is artifact free.
- TINT REMOVAL: Abnormal tint occurs in situations where the sensors of the camera have inappropriately picked up excess green from fluorescent lights, or excess blue from ultraviolet, or excess yellow from tungsten lights. Perfectly Clear's patent pending process will automatically remove these unwanted tints.
In addition to the slider bars there are a further two preset options:
- DEFAULT: reloads the preset as it is applied to each image when first loaded.
- FIX DARK: this preset is particularly good for images that have very dark and very bright areas.
Above: My Jim Carey photo that I use to test flash emulating apps. Here it has received the Perfectly Clear 'FixDark' preset which easily matches if not betters other flash emulation apps.When you are satisfied with your tweaked photo it is time to save it, and hitting Save brings up the save box with options to save at up to 1600x1200 on the iPhone 3G or up to 1536x2048 on the 3GS.
What do I think about Perfectly Clear?
In a word "FANTASTIC". This app does everything that iFlashReady and AutoAdjust can do for me, but with much greater control.
The auto-correction function produces very similar results to that of AutoAdjust, however the additional adjustments puts Perfectly Clear ahead, and the 'FixDark' preset matches the results produced by apps like iFlashReady, but again the additional adjustments puts Perfectly Clear ahead of the game again.
Above: The original non tweaked dark photo
Above: The same photo given the Perfectly Clear 1 click fix
Above: The same photo given the AutoAdjust treatmentThis app is going to replace 4 of my permanent, as so gets the iPhoneography recommended award.
AppStore Link: Perfectly Clear (Patented Automatic Photo Correction) - Price £1.79/$2.99
Perfectly Clear in iPhone App Review 
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Reader Comments (12)
I like this app very much as per my comment here http://www.iphoneography.com/journal/2009/11/4/new-iphone-photo-app-perfectly-clear-patented-automatic-phot.html#comments
I've been using this app for awhile now, but be careful with the Sharpening slider. By default, it's set much too high (and resets itself each time), which you'll notice as an awful speckling effect when you view a photo full-size. Somewhere around 1/3 works for me. If they can let us save our own presets in an update, that would make it perfect. I've also used iFlashReady a lot less after buying Perfectly Clear.
if PC has removed iFlashReady and AutoAdjust from your permanent apps... what are the other 2 you said it replaces ? just curious :)
Can i have a promo code for this
@TrevorML. In addition to iFlashReady and AutoAdjust, this app has replaced Color Claw which I was using to correct colour casts and an app called Flash which offered a wider range of flash emulation and complemented iFlashReady (I had planned to review Flash, which was on my list of reviews to do).
I'm really positive amazed about perfectly clear's function. makes a really good job
Er, just a comment on the last photo there - there is a sign for a "weak bridge"? There seems something very wrong with that...lol
WOW! I took your recommendation and dropped the $3.00 on this app. I'm really disappointed. It's seems to be fine when I take a photo within the app but if I import a pic from the camera roll it will not save full size. I get 340x480. That is worthless. I didn't expect this app to make garbage photos magically awesome but I did expect something more than what I got.
By the way...I really enjoy this site. I added it to my daily reader. Keep it up.
@xwhiteboy777x
try using a different pic or take snap out of the app. You will see, that you get the res. you want.
If you have shot the original pic with a lower res, then it's clear that also the pic changed with perfect clear will have a low res
@vlamas
I tested the app with several pics. The only time I got a 1200 x 1600 was when I shot a photo directly from within the app. Even when I load a full size image from the camera roll it only gives me and option to save at 340 x 480. Anyway...thanks for the advice but this time it's not my fault...it's the app. I've made a lot of bad purchases and this happens to be one of them. Oh well...
@xwhiteboy777x
On my 3GS the pics remain always the size they have before. Most of the time the pics improve using it.
The only improvement for me would be to reduce the default amount of sharpening. I shoot a lot in low light and with sharpening the pics increase in noise. I am happy that the app allows to manually switch sharpen off.
And a kind of batch processing could be nice also.
Perfectly clear remains now for a long time on my phone and replaced all (not even bad) flash apps i had before. With it i get also improvements in the middle of the day (better color).
If you have more time to play you can try Photo FX and other apps with curve adjustment. But it needs time. With Perfectly clear its more or less a one button fix.
... and i have never tried to shoot with Perfectly clear. I only use it for postprocessing.