Pro Hdr and ProCamera, 2 Awesome photo apps!

   In the smart phone world, technology is doubling and doubling again exponentially.  Every day hundreds of new apps are submitted and added to the  iphone's portfolio.  Currently, as of April 2011, there are over 350,000 of them.  There are literally hundreds of photography apps doing everything from creating vintage photo booth effects to full on editing.  The state of the art in photography is HDR.  Professional photographers have always rolled their eyes when they hear about the latest app touting HDR.  This is because true HDR is produced by either using two cameras, or two shots using different light settings and blending them together.  An app has never been able to faithfully recreate that.  Until now.  Instead of raising their eyes, Pro Hdr is raising eyebrows.  And here's why.

    Pro HDR, $1.99, takes an amazingly good facsimile of an HDR photo using the iphone’s camera.  HDR stands for High Dynamic Range Imaging.   What that means is the camera takes two pictures, a light one and a dark one, and then blends the two, combining all the range of light in the image.  What is produced is a shot that contains all the ranges of available light.  Ansel Adams invented the first true application of this discipline in the Zone System.  His black and white photographs contained the entire spectrum from pure white to pure black and all the shades of gray in between.  HDR does the same with color.  And Pro Hdr does it with the iphone.  A direct shot can be taken using the app instead of the iphone camera, or pictures can be loaded from the iphone’s photo library.  When the screen is tapped to take a photograph, the photographer must remain still while the app analyzes the exposures.  It then takes 2 shots and processes them together.  This is the Auto Mode.   Once the shot is taken or chosen, Pro Hdr gives  you  5 tweaking options- brightness, contrast, saturation, warmth and tint.  You then have the option to save.  You can also load from your camera roll, clicking twice on the picture and the app creates the same process.  The shot can now be edited the same way.  So though the app takes a good HDR image, direct or from the camera roll, a person still has the option to edit. 

    ProCamera, $2.99.  ProCamera has 2 modes, expert and regular. Regular steps the complexity down for the average person that just wants to take a nice shot with their phone.  ‘Expert’ is for the person who wants more control and more features.  The controls are intuitive and meld with the central template of the iphone.  You can adjust the 'white' balance, which is basically exposure, as well as the focus by dragging 2 boxes around with a finger swipe.  Once the desired look is achieved, you use the white balance button and it locks in.  A shot can be taken by touching any area on the screen, as well as fast multiple shots.  You can also shoot video with the exposure you desire by using the same locking boxes.  Some of the features are antishake, selftimer, multishot, power zooming and fullscreen trigger.  There is also an ‘album’ option where pictures can be loaded from the iphone camera roll.  Editing such as cropping, rotation, color and light adjustments and effects like sepia and other vintage modes can be applied there.  There are so many things a person can do with this app; it’s really like having a professional studio inside the iphone. 

    All the photographs created by using these 2 great apps can be saved to the iphone camera roll, emailed, or uploaded to facebook.  Your artistic imagination is the only limitation to what you can do.  You can even take a shot with Pro HDR, save it, and then upload it to ProCamera where you can tweak it, edit it, colorize it with the ‘special effects’ and re-save it.  If you want to kick your photography up a notch, if you are an “I” journalist, a professional photographer or someone who wants the simplicity of not having to take your SLR or point and shoot with you everywhere, you need to check out these iphone apps.  The smart phone camera has finally entered the realm of serious photography with Pro HDR and ProCamera.