New iPhone Photo App: Primasnap
Sunday, November 14, 2010 at 6:58PM | Glyn Evans 
App Store Description: Primasnap takes high dynamic range photography to the next level with brilliant True Dynamic Range (TDR) photos!
For all of its hype and promise, HDR photography has some serious shortcomings. Ever wonder why you never see great HDR photos of people? Probably because it's nearly impossible to get multiple camera shots to line up perfectly. And how about the super-saturated surreal results you get? Hardly a true representation of what your eye really sees.
Enter Primasnap's True Dynamic Range (TDR) technology. We've researched how the human eye visualizes a scene and applied this knowledge to produce true and realistic high dynamic range photos.
Use Primasnap for:
- Great candid and fast motion photos. TDR requires only one photo, so there is no issue of multiple image alignment.
- Realistic high dynamic range. TDR is designed to represent an image as close as possible to reality, without any artsy or fake digital filters.
- Smooth facial texture and low light detail. TDR can recover most low light detail while preserving realistic facial texture.
- Use Primasnap to improve photos you've already taken. Improve the quality of the images in your Photo Library, or even use Primasnap on photos from other sources.
- Primasnap can be used in conjunction with the iPhone 4's HDR or your favorite HDR package. Primasnap can give details in these images an extra Pop!
Primasnap is extremely easy to use. The virtually automated process can drastically improve an image in just seconds! Don't understand concepts like HDR, exposure, aperture, contrast, etc? No problem... Primasnap requires absolutely no photography experience!
App Store Link: Primasnap; Price: £0.59/$0.99/€0.79
Editors comments: To get true HDR results, you need at least two photos, one under and one over exposed, so I am always skeptical of any app that promises algorithms that produces HDR results from a single photo.
In the case of Primasnap, their algorithm/technology is called TDR (True Dynamic Range), which promises to overcome the limitations of traditional HDR, but in practice this app is just like the others that make these claims, useless.
To give this app a chance, I loaded a number of photos that I had taken on my old iPhone 3G (as this app is surplus to requirement if you have an iPhone 4), but whilst Primasnap did increase the exposure range on all of them, this increase was so negligible it was difficult to tell the difference between them.
Above: The original photo without Primasnap
Above: The same photo with Primasnap
Final thoughts
Whilst the app is easy to use, the results were so disappointing, that it gets the thumbs down from me.
Primasnap in New iPhone App, New iPhone Photo Apps
Reader Comments (10)
That sample image is hardly a good example to make any judgments. Primasnap looks like it did a good job bringing out the shadow detail, what else were you expecting? I tried this app and was pleasantly surprised with the results.
This was just one example. None of my test images produced anything to shout about, and if you have an iPhone 4, then you already have HDR.
I saw that Marty gave this app a four star review and the Dynamic Range feature sounded interesting. Maybe Marty was able to extract better results than I, as on my 3GS, it did nothing except to add some noise to the image. It has three controls: normal, lighter, and darker, with no adjustment bar or other variable control. It does save at high res and that is all well and fine, but without adjustment controls, what good is that? I know you did a purge of your useless photo apps Glyn, and this crappy, useless app is not only a waste of a dollar, but is being deleted off my phone as it isn't worth the space. The developers need to do a lot better, this is like a scam app.
I do feel scammed; I was probably blinded by the pseudo-science and exaggerated claims made by the developers when I bought this app.
The before and after pics so far have been nearly indistinguishable.
I agree, the app description implies great things, but the only thing is a bad taste of being scammed by this app. I ran some tests against a couple of photos taken with my iPhone 4, and with these you could see a difference between the before and after, but with true HDR apps out there this app is surplus to requirement.
Based on others comments here, I am am downgrading this app to AVOID.
Installed it and deleted it. Total time: 3 minutes.
Last night, I adjusted my App Store review down to three stars after using the app for a while. I gave it 3-1/2 stars on the blog (the half star is for the interface -- I liked the pinch and zoom a lot). It does a good job, but not great. I did like how it improved the brightness of 3/4 tones and all but the darkest shadows.
The app reminds me a lot of the now unavailable imphoto -- an app which Glyn and I were less than enthused about.
This app doesn't need the HDR buzzword to mislead buyers. It hacks me off when I see a dev throw that phrase around. I suppose HDR is a more recognizable word and therefore sexier than "DRC", which is what this app really is.
It doesn't do a bad job for me. Not miraculous but not bad. I still use DRC apps on my 4. The more I use it, the more I'm discovering limitations of the camera that I hadn't noticed before. Although I prefer Perfectly Clear despite having to tiptoe around its newfound quirks, Primasnap won't be deleted from my iPhone for at least a while. I may need it to fix something PC can't.
=M=
omg..it's like I've been scammed..the effect is nothing that surprise me...it just make the darker part of your picture visible and that makes your photo get a bad noise...better use Color Leap which is free..owh btw the UI of this app is crap and outdated like an old version of Microsoft user interface.
Wish I had seen this review before I bought it. I cannot see any difference at all in any of my photos I tried this app on. AVOID until they have a version that really works, and allows you to tweak the image rather than just give you three options.
For those of you that bought this crap app and are unhappy, you should think about writing a review of it in the app store. It has only eight ratings and is currently rated 3-1/2 stars. Hate to see fellow iphoneographers waste their money on this ridiculous app.