Project 365 Day 45 - 30/9/13

Yesterday morning I got up pretty early with my brother to go up St Catherine's Hill in Winchester to try and get some shots of the dawn light. We were both bracketing our shots to do some HDR in post. I decided tonight to see if there was an HDR app for ipad and have been pleasantly surprised with the results I've gotten.

I used TrueHDR which cost £1.49 which is worth it for the quality of the results but it would be a better deal at 69p as there are some minor issues.

Here are some of the results :)

Out shooting I was bracketing 3 exposures but TrueHDR only uses 2 for each composite so I picked my darkest and lightest shots to merge. There is a brightness slider which works well and the above shot could have used a bit more. For these images I have only used the natural mode but there is a Vivid mode that offers more extreme settings.

After using TrueHDR I used PhotoPal to do a bit of sharpening and in the above shot I did need it to pull out the shadows on the tree. TrueHDR would feel more like a complete package if it had effective shadow and highlight control but considering it takes about 20 seconds to process and get results as pleasing as these I'll save using photoshop for when I really need the added control.

In this last composite the branch on the right is ghosting where TrueHDR didn't line up the shots properly, this is probably due to wind but there is no way in app to correct or adjust this. The last little thing that I think would improve the app is being able to use it in landscape orientation.

Here are some in app views...

4 adjustment sliders are available to you for adjusting your HDR composite...

Instagram style effects can be applied but other than the black and white setting they are very harsh and be done more effectively in other apps.

Overall I was amazed an ipad app could do HDR composites this well and it feels to me like an ipad could be all a photographer needs in the near future, it would be great to put all the editing feature you'd ever need into one app but it would take a really good developer to make a solid app that could rival photoshop.

Some bonus shots from up the hill...