Life in LoFi: iPhoneography | iPhone Photo News, Showcases, App Reviews

Noise Master
Version reviewed: 1.1
Price: $2.99, on sale now for $1.99

Bottom Line: One of the best noise reduction apps in the App Store. Reduces noise while holding most details.

Noise Master is a new app from Lucky Clan, the developer of the popular Top Camera photo app. It claims to be the fastest, most effective app to remove noise from photos. The app is designed to produce clean, smooth, noise-free images while preserving important details.

There are other noise reducers available — mostly as tools in other apps. I tested Noise Master against several of the more notable noise reduction tools — Adobe Photoshop Express, Perfectly Clear, and PhotoForge2. Click past the jump to see how Noise Master stacks up. >>>

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Orasis
Version 1.0

Bottom Line: I didn’t like it. Images look more like single-photo fake-HDR apps than images corrected to be more visually accurate.

Even with the superior phone camera of the iPhone 4 (and hopefully and even better camera coming in the new iPhones later this year), a Dynamic Range Correction app is an essential component of my toolbox. For years, that app has been Perfectly Clear by Athentech.

New photo app Orasis by Orasis Imaging claims to “[capture] reality, not just light.” It attempts to make photos more realistic by simulating the sensation of appearance formed by our Visual System. While the sample image in the App Store looks good, the real world images that I tested it with didn’t look like reality, but more like the results from a single-image HDR app.

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Even with the improved camera of the iPhone 4, Perfectly Clear [ ] is still a regular part of my photo processing workflow. It’s one-button processing that  compensates and tweaks color, contrast and brightness in iPhone photos. It improves image sharpness, punches up normally exposed images, and can help save poorly exposed ones. I think it’s still an essential app for iPhone 2G, 3G, and 3GS owners.

One of Life In LoFi’s Facebook followers just pointed out that Perfectly Clear hasn’t been available in the App Store for the past day or so.

I contacted Brad Malcolm, President of Athentech Imaging, to find out what’s up with Perfectly Clear.

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UPDATED: Glyn Evans from The iPhoneography Blog provided an additional fix to the app’s “Out of Memory” errors. It’s now included here and I’ve changed my recommendation. =M=

Perfectly Clear by Athentech has been one of my mainstay apps for several updates and two iPhones. On my older iPhone, it was my first step with nearly every image I processed. It’s fast, easy Dynamic Range Correction (DRC) that balances luminance and color, adds sharpness, and in more recent versions helps to reduce noise especially in processing images with a lot of darker areas. Perfectly Clear helps to overcome the deficiencies and limitations of the iPhone’s camera.

Perfectly Clear was recently updated. The 2.2 update fixes some lingering stability and reliability issues with the app, adds some high resolution graphics for retina displays, and limits the processed size of images. The new update still has memory issues. Read on for more info on what to expect from this new update.

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Primasnap: before & after. Click to enlarge

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Primasnap
Version 1.0
Price: $0.99

Bottom Line: It’s not HDR, but it’s fast, simple, and good for iPhone photographers who just want to quickly tweak their images. It’s not the miracle fix-all app the description implies.

I’m usually wary of any iPhone photo app that promises true HDR from existing images in your photo library or tries without taking multiple exposures. Real HDR involves at least three exposures and can create stunning color and detail throughout the entire visible spectrum. Even Apple’s Camera supports real HDR. Often, though, most apps just latch onto the phrase HDR because it’s a buzz word.

Primasnap by Viderea is a new Dynamic Range Correction (DRC) photo app that claims to produce HDR-like results by using one exposure. Hey, they got your attention, didn’t they? It’s really an exposure enhancement app — one of the good ones, but not HDR.

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Perfectly Clear 2.1 was released Tuesday. This update fixes several bugs including the previously reported crashes which effected nearly all iPhones. Also fixed were a wording error and the app now displays the proper dimensions in the settings screen for saving full resolution photos on the iPhone 4. This update has all of the new features in the 2.0 update, including the very nice user-defined preset feature, improved sharpening, and the ability to share images on Twitter and Facebook, and an in-app purchase for pretty cool automatic noise reduction.

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I was asked to post this email from Brad Malcolm, the President of Athentech, the developers of Perfectly Clear. I have posted it in its entirety, but first, I wanted to weigh in with my thoughts on this update.

Perfectly Clear has been one of my primary go-to apps for a while. It’s one of the apps that I recommend most to new iPhoneographers. It’s an essential app for the early iPhone 2G and 3G models and I still use it to improve images on my iPhone 4.

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[UPDATED 8.31.10 @ 18:00]

We’ve got more on the Perfectly Clear 2.0 update, including a fix of sorts.

The Perfectly Clear 2.0 update is in the app store now, but use caution in updating to this version of the app at this time. It’s not as unstable as I initially feared, but it still needs a lot more coddling than an iPhone app should require in order to work.

This release seems to be less stable than previous versions and crashes on saving with older iPhones. If you have an iPhone 2G or 3G, I recommend not updating the app and sticking with the older version for now.

The crashes are confirmed on a 2G, 3G, and iPhone 4. The bottom line is that unlike previous versions which were pretty rock solid, the 2.0 version can be buggy on any iPhone.

Click past the jump to read more, to find out how to reduce or eliminate problems on an iPhone 4, and to find a link to instructions on how to get your previous working version back in case you already updated the app.

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[UPDATED 8/27/10 4:19 PM]

Nearly everyone with an iPhone has used the camera to take snapshots — pictures of family, friends and moments to capture and share. Far fewer — but a growing and diverse number — have created art for show, gallery or exhibition. But how many would consider using an iPhone for commercial work? How many of you already have?

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Photographed with an iPhone 4
Toolbox: Perfectly Clear, Best Camera

Dayton, Ohio
July 17, 2010

=M=

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