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.
=M=
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Camera Flash Deluxe by Haiwen Soft is yet another entry into the crowded flash enhancement category, and despite the additional features this app boasts, the overall results are unimpressive.
Using my standard test images (see below), the results this app produces are flat and washed out.
I like the simplicity of iFlashReady when compared to many other flash apps. Three “flash” settings. It’s as quick and easy as open, click, save. I’ve tested it on a range of images. When I need to use this app, the results are often good — better than nearly all of the flash effect apps. It helps dark areas of my images without blowing out the whites as some other apps do. It doesn’t always produce great results, but definitely often enough to justify the purchase.
Today was a really dreary North Texas day. Not our usual early autumn day — cool, pretty, maybe scattered thunderstorms over the Texas State Fair. Today was more wintery. It was that dreary, cold, gray rainy day that just gets in your bones.
Stacy and I were on our way to the West Side and discussing how photogenic D/FW was. After two great shoots recently in New York and Seattle, I was feeling a little like our great Metroplex was a little hard to photograph. Stacy, on the other hand, spoke of all the great things there are to shoot here and told me how she’d love to shoot all of the tall overpasses here — the Mixmasters, as we call ‘em. She loved the lines and how some of them gave the illusion of driving off into nothing. While they are pretty stunning, at the time with the rain pouring down, I wasn’t feeling the D/FW love and was feeling pretty down about shooting in my own backyard.
And then we arrived at Central Market.
“There’s pretty in everyday stuff. You just have to look for it.” – Stacy
Camera One by CocoaTek is not a great camera replacement app. For the money, there are better ones out there. I like the feature set and if they worked as advertised this would be a pretty good app. But Camera One is just one of many average camera apps filled with features that either under-deliver or simply aren’t there.
I like the built-in “My Color” feature; the black & white conversion is good and there’s also a nice built-in Vintage effect. The app has a simulated “Flash” effect which is supposed to help lighten the exposure of your images. The Grid Lines are nice and help you compose and level your pictures. There is a good crosshair target in the center of the viewfinder. This app is solid; I was able to take several pictures in a row and the app never crashed. There is an switchable audible ping when you change your camera settings. Unfortunately, turning this off does not also mute the camera’s shutter sound.
There’s a lot here that needs improvement. The app doesn’t retain your settings after you close it. While the developer advertises a 4X Digital Zoom, the quality of the zoom is poor. As with many of the lower-quality digital zooms in the App Store, it’s just in-camera cropping and produces small-sized images. The pan-and-zoom feature and Before-After view are non-existent — these features are just not there.
There is no live preview in the viewfinder for the color effects or for the flash-effect. You have to go to the camera roll after you shoot and the image saves to see the results of the effects. The flash-effect produces unacceptable halos. There are much better flash-effect applications, such as iFlashReady or even the free Zipix Lite. The developer promises image save times of 2 seconds, but on my 2G iPhone, it took over 11 seconds to save one picture and over 7 seconds before the camera was ready to take another shot.
This app may bill itself as an all-in-one replacement for “so many small iPhone Camera applications.” However, few of the features work as well as the apps they are supposed to replace.
There is already a free update in the works which should add new features to the app, including Anti-shake mode, GPS Tagging, Time Stamp, and a big button shutter. These additional features would be nice and would bring the app up to par with many of the other top camera replacements available now. Before they rush out a bunch of new features, though, I’d really like for them to get the current ones right.
