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.
Perfectly Clear is a Dynamic Range Correction app that quickly and easily improves the sharpness, exposure, saturation and contrast of iPhone photos. It sharpens, brightens and compensates for the gray cast and narrower tonal range sometimes found with older iPhones.
As previously reported, the Perfectly Clear 2.0 update introduced several new features, including the new noise reduction feature. The 2.0 update was also infamously unstable on any iPhone that wasn’t an iPhone 4 running the latest version of the iOS. When processing, the app created an increase in memory which is standard for image processing — and it was this spike which caused the OS then to shut down the app.
The new 2.1 now works well on both my iPhone 4 and my first generation iPhone 2G running iPhone OS 3.1.3. We’ve been trying to break it all night. We’ve been processing images all evening with the app on the older iPhone 2G and have only experienced one crash while saving — a 5 megapixel image created using 7.0 Megapixel Camera. We’ve had no problems with 2G native 2.0MP files. Your mileage may vary, but this release seems to be pretty solid.
We also found that file saves were more reliable in this version.
On a separate note, some users were reporting that the new noise reduction feature wasn’t working at all. We tested this feature on several images tonight. While it won’t produce miracles on extremely grainy, low-light images, it visibly reduced noise on every image we threw at it. Some of them processed better than others. Below is one of the sample images we processed using the add-on noise reduction.
Noise reduction feature in the Perfectly Clear 2.1 update. Click to enlarge.
This test image was the best example produced and may not be typical of average performance, but it’s pretty impressive that the noise reduction is capable of producing reducing this much color noise. Again, nothing can save a badly underexposed image, but overall, I was pretty impressed with the new feature and how it performed with the older, noisy camera. The noise reduction is an additional $1.99 available through in-app purchase only. I highly recommend the purchase if you have an older iPhone 2G, 3G, and 3GS.
Perfectly Clear works on any iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad running OS 3.0 or newer.
I’ll have a full review of Perfectly Clear in the coming days. For now, it’s safe to update Perfectly Clear — on whatever device you’re using.
Perfectly Clear is $2.99 in the App Store. The Noise Removal add-on is available as an in-app purchase for $1.99.
=M=
~~~~
Photo credit: Stacy Anderson
