TrueHDR and Pro HDR iPhone Apps

Being some what impressed with the iPhone's built in HDR capabilities I wanted to see if I could get even better results from the HDR apps. While the iPhone's HDR captures images almost instantly, the HDR apps tend to require you to hold the camera very still for a longer period of time while capturing multiple images. I decided to try Pro HDR and TrueHDR. My initial impression was Pro HDR was the better app, and for some situations it still maybe. Pro HDR allows you to make some adjustments to brightness, contrast, warmth, tint, and saturation. This allows you to do some fine tuning before saving the image. However, in high contrast shots you often get some funky distortions in the images where something bright meets something dark.

Recently TrueHDR released an update and it seems to have resulted in much better results. TrueHDR has an automated mode that will automatically take 3 pictures at different exposures. It then merges them together and produces a pretty good image. They offer two modes via the settings menu, vivid and natural, depending on what you like. There is also a semi-auto and manual mode, which allow you to select the bright and dark areas of the image yourself.

This is an image I captured today that came out pretty good. I did nothing more than rest the iPhone on top of my vehicle. I will post the original images (it saved two) along with the final merged image.

Under exposed image which captured the details in the sky:

Over exposed image which captured detail in the barn, cars, etc:

Merged image containing details from the sky and barn:

These are the images straight off the iPhone. I decided to adjust the contrast of the final image to make it appear less washed out:

Unfortunately I didn't try to capture the same shot with ProHDR, I will try to do that in the future.