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CameraFlash+
Version 1.0
Price: Free, with an additional $0.99 in-app upgrade
Bottom Line: Not that great, not even for free
CameraFlash+ is a new exposure enhancing app from G-Power which promises to improve the overall luminance of iPhone photographs. It automatically calculates optimized lighting settings for each pixel, helping to compensate for some of the limitations of an iPhone’s camera — especially older iPhones or the new iPod Touch 4th Gen.
This app still needs a lot of work. CameraFlash+ is a frustratingly buggy piece of software. I wanted to review it on my iPhone 2G using iOS 3.1 — a device that can really use an exposure enhancer — but it crashed on opening 100% of the time.
The camera module doesn’t work right for me. Images taken with the camera don’t load into the app most of the time. If an image loads, I’m unable to apply filters or save images. If this is a limitation of the free version, it would be nice to know this in the description. Loading images from the photo library worked fine.
The free version of the app saves at 320×320 pixels. Not only is this an incredibly low and unusable resolution, but the app also crops off the top and bottom of your image.
The “flash” effect is decent. It did a good enough job with my horrible Ciudad Antigua test image. It filled in the midtones without completely blowing out the highlights in the clouds, but it did little for the darker 3/4 tones and shadows. The exposure enhancement also looks like it adds a lot of noise in many of my test images. There are other apps — free and commercial — that do as good a job or better without the other problems of this app.
The app comes with about 9 image effects — black & white, sepia, warm, cool and a few other unnamed effects. The additional effects are okay. Nothing outstanding. And the whole app is very slow, even on an iPhone 4.
CameraFlash+ is a free app with an in-app upgrade that unlocks the ability to save images in high resolution. There really was little about this app that made me want to spend the $0.99 for the in-app upgrade. For owners of older iPhones, there are other free “flash” fixers, like Flash for Free and Color Leap that are more stable, save in full-resolution and do a good job of exposure enhancement. If you’re looking for an app to improve the brightness and contrast of your images, look elsewhere for a flash fixer.
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