Life in LoFi: iPhoneography

Flash Hero
Version 1.2

Bottom line: Not recommended. Two of the three filters work poorly.

Flash Hero is a new “flash fixer” app from Asasa Software which uses three different kinds of exposure enhancements to fix the lighting of a photo.

No two images are the same and many times an exposure enhancement app that does a great job on one image works poorly with another. That’s why I keep several exposure enhancers in my iPhone. Flash Hero attempts to give you three different types of exposure enhancement in one app. The idea is that of the three, one of them will work best to fix your image. It’s a great concept. Unfortunately, two of the filters work poorly and the third is redundant and unnecessary if you already have another slider-based flash fixer, such as Perfectly Clear, Auto Adjust or FlashPhix. All three of these apps produce better results more easily.

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Trusight Pro
Version 1.0

Bottom Line: Great results, but only saves low-res images. Disappointing….

Trusight Pro

When shooting on my iPhone, I rely on exposure enhancing apps such as Perfectly Clear, SmartCam and FlashPhix as a first step in most of my iPhone photo processing. These apps help remove the gray cast sometimes found in raw iPhone photos, help improve shadow detail, and restore brilliant color, luminance and contrast to an image. A good exposure enhancer does a superior job of bringing out the detail in 3/4-tones and shadows while not blowing out the details of the highlights in an image.

Trusight Pro by Trusight, Inc. is an excellent exposure enhancer. On any iPhone, the app restores color and dynamic range to an image. Unfortunately, it’s limited by what I feel is a pretty signifcant flaw — low resolution output.

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Recently, I wrote about The Best Free iPhoneography Apps: Camera Replacements. Now that you’ve shot your image, how are you going to process it? Here are nine great image editing apps and best of all, their price is free!

I realize that this list is not complete. There were several apps that I didn’t include for various reasons. In compiling this list, I found some apps that duplicated features of others. In those cases, I chose what I felt to be the app that did the job quickest, easiest and best. Also, there are great free apps being released all the time.

Some of these apps may be ad-supported, but none of them add a watermark to your images and all save at or really close to your iPhone’s full resolution, unlike many lite photo apps available. These are all full-featured apps and they produce good, if not outstanding effects. Again, for little more than bandwidth and real estate on your iPhone’s screen, there are some gems to be found in the photography section of the App Store. These apps should start you off with a well-rounded iPhoneography toolbox or enhance your existing iPhone “camera bag” — and all for free.

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UPDATE 12/30/09: In the new 1.31.3 update, images that are processed in-camera are saved in full resolution, 1600×1200 on my 2G.

Also, in the new update, the built-in hook to the image-enhancement website, 9Monkeys.net, now works seamlessly and quickly within the app.

Kudos to the app’s developer Carl Im at 9Monkeys, who has always been very responsive when I’ve brought up issues from the perspective of an end user.

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SmartCam

SmartCam
Version 1.15.3

Bottom Line: A little pricey, but good exposure enhancement for your existing underexposed images

SmartCam from 9Monkeys Ltd. is a camera, exposure enhancement, and portal to an online image adjusting website. It’s an overlooked app that hasn’t really found its audience in the App Store yet. At $2.99 USD, it’s a little more expensive than most apps in this category which typically run about a buck. How does it fare and is it worth the premium? It depends on how you use the app.

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Auto Adjust

One of my favorite exposure enhancement apps, AutoAdjust, has just been updated to version 2.0. The new version features mostly performance enhancements, including better preview rendering, more intuitive sliders, and an improved gamma adjustment.

Not all exposure enhancement or “flash enhancement” apps work the same on the same image. An image that still looks bad with one app may be usable when fixed with another. I keep several exposure enhancement apps on my iPhone for that reason. AutoAdjust is one of them.

AutoAdjust works great with many underexposed images, as well as adding just the right amount of punch and contrast to a decent looking image. Highly recommended!

I have several promo codes for AutoAdjust 2 in the app store. They only work in the U.S. App Store. I’ll send one promo code to each of the first several readers who request one in this post’s comments — one code per reader, please. Be sure to include an email address somewhere in your post for me to send it to. Don’t forget to leave feedback in the App Store.

App Store link: AutoAdjust 2

I’d like to thank the developer, Joe Macirowski, for giving us the promo codes.

Aloha from Waikiki! I’ve got a lot of things to catch up on during the flight back to Texas tomorrow, but here’s a quick bit of news.

The free exposure-enhancing app from Neurigen Corp. Zipix Lite is now called Color Leap. In addition to the crop feature, this new update also adds Sharpening and Noise Reduction, which is especially helpful when you take underexposed pictures.

Zipix Lite has long been one of my favorite free exposure enhancers. There are very few freebie apps that do as good a job in nicely adding brightness to an underexposed image. I think Zipix Lite/Color Leap does a better job than most of the brightening apps that you have to pay for.

Neurigen have been indicating that they’ll charge for this app, and if the new features work as well as the exposure enhancement, Color Leap will still be worth a dollar or two. I haven’t had a chance to see how the new filters work yet, but this free app is an essential grab just for the exposure enhancement alone. Get it while it’s still free.

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Auto Adjust

Auto Adjust by Joe Macirowski is free for a limited time! This is not a feature-crippled “lite” version, but the full version.

We reviewed Auto Adjust recently. Unlike many of the “flash fixer apps” available, it’s more than just a flash enhancer which simply brightens your images and can wash them out and cause them to look flat. This app uses “contrast stretching” or normalization to help correct exposure. Its adjustable enhancement produces excellent results on many images that would otherwise be lost due to underexposure as well as automatically correcting the contrast of more properly exposed images. Auto Adjust is one of my go-to apps.

A new update has been submitted. This is a great opportunity to get in the upgrade path.

This is one of the best exposure enhancement apps available in the App Store. It’s highly recommended at its regular price of $0.99 USD. It’s an essential app while it’s free. Grab it now!

App Store link: Auto Adjust

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Auto Adjust

As promised, developer Joe Macirowski has updated Auto Adjust to version 1.1. I reviewed the app a few weeks ago and my biggest issue with this otherwise excellent app was the rotation bug that seems to be occurring in many new photo apps. The newly-released update fixes this issue and images now save to your camera roll with the correct orientation.

I’ve had a chance to use this app often since its release and many times the results are outstanding. There are other apps that use normalization for exposure correction, but I’ve found Auto Adjust easily and consistently produces superior results with good color, saturation and the least amount of noise that you’re going to get from running exposure correction processing. It tweaks the contrast of moderately underexposed images, but this app can sometimes work miracles on images I initially thought were too dark to be useful.

Especially after the new update, I highly recommend this app. The update is now available in the App Store.

Auto Adjust is now only $.99 USD in the App Store.

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Auto Adjust

Auto Adjust
Version 1.0

Bottom Line: Recommend!

Auto Adjust by Joe Macirowski is a new app that uses a different algorithm to adjust dark or washed-out areas of your images. Auto Adjust is more than just a “flash enhancer” which simply brightens your images and can wash them out and cause them to look flat. This app uses “contrast stretching” or normalization to help correct exposure. Thinking about the theory behind contrast stretching makes my brain hurt. It’s something we take for granted every time we do color or luminance adjustment in Photoshop, but like writing PostScript, I’d rather have an application do all of the under the hood stuff for me rather than learning the actual code.

However it works its magic, Auto Adjust does a great job of enhancing dark images and I found it can also do a decent job of adding punch and contrast to a flat, washed out image.

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aE Camera Flash

aE Camera Flash
Version 1.1

Updated: Bottom line: Avoid

Update 10/26/09: Originally, I gave this app a “Recommend” rating because I like the results and was hopeful that the developer would address my issues in future update. Unfortunately, other than leaving feedback in the app store (or possibly trying to phone them at their auto parts division), there’s no way to contact this developer. The app isn’t shown on their website, even though it’s at version 1.1. The email address for iPhone support bounces with a “User unknown in relay recipient table” error. I’ve tried several times over the course of the last few days.

While I like this app and feel that it offers unique results for the iPhone, right now I’m not feeling any level of commitment behind it from the developer. While I like how this app treats shadows and midtones, I feel that the image orientation bug is pretty major and without some feedback from the developer, I really can’t recommend this app any more until this bug is addressed.

My original review is below.

Of the flash apps I’ve tested, aE Camera Flash by BahnTech produces superior results for flash enhancement. According to the developer, the app was created with the input from an unnamed team which included a photographer, a director of graphic design for an unnamed international magazine, and a DSP expert from USC. Any time an app touts creds like that, I get leery.

Wow! I was pleasantly surprised by the results.

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