New iPhone Photo App: Pro HDR
Tuesday, December 22, 2009 at 7:05PM | Glyn Evans 
Description from the AppStore: Pro HDR: effortlessly capture beautiful full-size HDR photos on your iPhone 3GS for the first time ever.
Thanks to Pro HDR, you no longer have to choose between a blown-out sky or a hopelessly dark foreground. Bringing high dynamic range photography to your iPhone, Pro HDR lets you capture an image exposed for the highlights and another exposed for the shadows. It then automatically aligns and blends the images, giving you a gorgeous 3-megapixel HDR image like nothing you've ever seen from such a tiny device.
Unlike fake HDR apps that merely take a single photo and reprocess it (without actually adding any new detail), Pro HDR massively extends the dynamic range of your camera and produces beautiful results that you have to see to believe. Plus, Pro HDR is the only real HDR app that processes your photos at full resolution for the ultimate quality. Now you can take stunning high-resolution photos of all those scenes that are just too contrasty to capture in a single picture.
Not only will seasoned photographers instantly fall in love with Pro HDR, one look at our example images should convince anyone that Pro HDR represents a new era in mobile photography.
Pro HDR comes with these incredibly useful features:
- In-app photo capture, where you get to choose the exposure of each image in your HDR
- Photo library support, where you can make HDRs from your saved images
- Proprietary image alignment algorithm that aligns full-size images in seconds
- Seamless image blending creates one beautiful output image nearly instantly
- Live-updating image adjustment sliders to perfect your HDR
- Fullscreen image preview in portrait and landscape orientation
- Saves HDR images at the full 3 megapixel resolution of your camera
- Built-in e-mail support lets you share your HDRs with the world
Above: This HDR shot of Seattle is from the developers website and shows the effect Pro HDR can produce from an under and over exposed shot.AppStore Link: Pro HDR - Price £1.19/$1.99
Editors comments: Now this looks like a good HDR photo app, but as I still don't have a 3GS I can not test it out, so if anyone does try this, then please let us know what it is like.
Pro HDR in New iPhone Photo Apps
Reader Comments (16)
Just bought this. Does seem to work, only tried indoor in poor light, but does what its says, and the four controls are very handy
I 2nd this, requires decent test criteria to fully evaluate. However looks very promising!
but as I still don't have a 3GS I can not test it out
Annoying isn't it? As far as the iPod goes, the technology advances too quickly :(
Seems to work well with the couple of test shots (indoors) I did. Processes a bit faster than True HDR, and full resolution is a welcome bonus!
-Jim
well this might push me over the edge and make me abandon TruHDR for now. Full rez HDR is a BIG Deal to me.
Only Issue I have with it so far is if the picture sizes don't match up if you are working from Camera roll, it send you back to start page, unlike TrueHDR which lets you delete the pics. Not a major issue, but worth pointing out.
OK here I bit the bullet and bought it. Totally against me to not buy it with out a review out about it but I use HDR allot so here goes nothing.
Here is a quick comparison between TrueHDR and ProHDR. INDEED ProHDR will output much larger images,
(ProHDR)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertbarr/4207024991/
(TrueHDR)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertbarr/4207755746/
(ProHDR)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertbarr/4207035225/
(TrueHDR)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertbarr/4207756572/
(ProHDR)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertbarr/4207056517/
(TrueHDR)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertbarr/4207057031/
ProHDR will let you tweak your settings after you have processed your photograph. I find that the default image that it produces is rather flat. II am usually bumping up the brightness, contrast, and saturation on everything I have shot. TrueHDR on the other hand is WYSIWYG and usually does a very good job with out needing to tweak much.
The Improved resolution alone makes it mostly worth it. I find that it does some double exposure blurring in some instances like with text and such. Just compare the shots I linked perhaps that could help some people see the difference between the two programs.
I will probably end up using ProHDR more unless TrueHDR comes out with full resolution support soon. On a side not the interface in ProHDR is more professional looking. The cartoon interface of TrueHDR was always a turn off for me.
I will keep using them both and figure out which one is worth it. Even though I am more pleased with the default results of TrueHDR I really like ProHRD’s larger resolution.
OK I did some comparison tests between TrueHDR and ProHDR. It ook me a min or two to get the hang of ProHDR... Make sure you slect the images in the proper order (dark then light) otherwise it will not process properly and will look muddy. Each program does certain things better. Check out the text in the door knob photo, along with the person on the bike in the sky line photo. I must say though I am very impressed with ProHDR. I think I will make it my new default HDR app.
(ProHDR)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertbarr/4207056517/
(TrueHDR)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertbarr/4207057031/
(ProHDR)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertbarr/4207035225/
(TrueHDR)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertbarr/4207756572/
(ProHDR)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertbarr/4207024991/
(TrueHDR)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertbarr/4207755746/
(ProHDR)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertbarr/4207130513/
Is this application only for 3GS? I have a 3G and want to find a decent HDR app.
firmware 3.1.2 only. I have 3.1 on a jailbroken iPhone so cant test it. :(
@Omar. Yes, sadly you do need a 3GS to use this app.
Some Comparison Shots... I like ProHDR more now that I have had time to use it.
(ProHDR) #1
(TrueHDR) #1
(ProHDR) #2
(TrueHDR) #2
(ProHDR) #3
(TrueHDR) #3
(ProHDR) #4
superb!
So does this app automatically bracket exposure? That would be a nice feature in an app like this, if its even possible.
@jabaum no it does not. You have to tap the dark area for then the light area. Unlike TrueHDR it hides the focusing box but works in practically the same way. I will be writing a little review of the program which should help anwser most questions.
I made a flickr photo group because the developer did not have one.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/prohdr/