New iPhone Photo App: Eraser Camera

Description from the AppStore: Eraser Camera is a iPhone application that erases the moving objects in taking a photo.

• Have you ever wanted to remove the person who just passed by, when you take a picture at the tourist's spot or the place of good scenery?
• When you take a photo of specific person, have not wanted to remove other people or cars in the background?

With normal camera, you have to wait for people to pass by, however if you use Eraser Camera, you do not need to wait, Eraser Camera will erase them for you.

Eraser camera takes two consecutive photos, and by analyzing them, it recognize the moving objects and removes them.

The principle of Eraser Camera is to overwrite only the required parts in the two photos.

Features:

• Automatically remove moving objects.
• Manually remove moving objects.
• Up to 15 seconds delayed timer.
• Interval of 0.6 sec, 0.8 sec or 1.0 sec between each photo.

Please note: I have edited the above AppStore description, as the original translation was a little poor.

AppStore Link: Eraser Camera - Price: £1.79/$2.99/€2.39

Editors comments: Eraser Camera is a simple app to use, and has the potential to be one of the best object removal apps for the iPhone but the developer has some things to sort out first.

The App

The app is simple to use, and after the apps launch page you are presented with a simple interface that at its heart has a large shutter button to press to take your photo.

There are a minimal set of in app settings allowing you to set a delay of up to 15 seconds before the app takes its photo, and an interval of 0.6 seconds, 0.8 seconds or 1.0 second between each of the 2 photos this app takes.

Eraser Camera does not harness the features of either the iPhone 4 or iPhone 3GS, offering only basic camera functions, there is no flash, zoom or touch-to-focus support here, and no full-res support on the iPhone 4.  That said, what it does, it does quite well.

Eraser Camera takes 2 consecutive photos with a delay between each, then it compares the 2 photos, merging them together to make the final photo, and in the process removes any moving object the app detects.  This automatic removal feature does not always work, so the developer has included a manual option, whereby you select each of the 2 photos in turn and use your finger to erase the unwanted object/objects, and then merges them together with the object removed.

Above: Screen shot showing a passer-byAbove: The merged photo with no passer-by

So what do I think of Eraser Camera?

Overall I was quite impressed, and this app definitely has potential, although it does have one very big bug.  In testing I found that every time I took a photo in landscape mode, the app would crash while processing the 2 images, however in portrait mode this did not seem to be a problem on my iPhone 4.

If the developer can resolve this crashing problem, increase the resolution and even allow for more than 2 photos to be taken and merged, then this app could easily become a 5 star app, but as it currently stands, it only gets 3 stars from me.

Comments

[Eric Holbrook]

I suppose one might ask the obvious question: If one photo is the good one without the person and the other is the photo with the person... why not just delete the second photo and be done with it? Why do you need an app for this? Doooh.

[Glyn Evans]

@Eric. OK, it may not have been the best example, and I should have used a photo where the subject was in both shots, but believe me the app does seem to work, and I was quite impressed.

[Eric Holbrook]

A better example might be perhaps in one shot the person is front of the red car, and the other shot the person is (still walking) in front of the blue car. Then it could in theory merge the two photos and use the unobstructed view of the red and blue cars taken from each shot into a final image without the person.

This is sort of how one of the features in Microsoft's (beta) photogallery works. Sort of takes a bunch of non-perfect shots and takes the best pieces from each and merges into a final perfect shot using the best parts from each photo (or eliminating the worst shots from each as the case may be).