IOS 4.1 with HDR built-in comes as a shock to HDR app developers | Hacker News Reader

IOS 4.1 with HDR built-in comes as a shock to HDR app developers

tuaw.com

12 pointsdieterrams24 comments

HDR app developers should be happy they have the opportunity to sell an app that improves or extends upon the native iPhone HDR features to an audience that had probably never even heard of HDR up until now. It's free marketing.

Potentially. It might be considered duplicating a built-in feature.

TrueHDR requires you to manually 1) tap on a bright region 2) wait for the image to stabilize 3) take a picture 4) tap on a dark region 5) wait again 6) take a second picture...

Sounds like a user experience that needed Apple's attention to me.

I wonder if HDR can be done digitally and automatically, so the whole process is just one click? Otherwise there's no real point putting the feature on a phone

That's what iOS 4.1 does.

From the article:

"Yuanzhen Li and Michael Parker have been offering TrueHDR for the iPhone for many months. It works well, and I have found the results impressive when it's used properly. The developers say they wrote to Steve Jobs last year requesting more control over the camera, and they submitted a detailed work-flow that pretty much matches what Jobs announced yesterday. Oh well."

Um, HDR isn't exactly a big secret that Apple couldn't figure out themselves without this "help".

A "detailed work flow" that consists of taking multiple exposure shots and merging them together with local tone mapping? That's the textbook definition of HDR.

So wait, is Apple just mining the app store and its developers for development ideas to lift now?

When did HDR start taking on this meaning? Iir, when I first heard it it meant an image that actually had high dynamic range, I.e. More detail in the shadows and highlights than could be shown on screen. These images could be used as light sources for global illumination in 3D graphics programs.

It seems nice to be able to control the exposure of different parts of an image independently, but that doesn't seem special enough to warrant a special label. I dunno.

I think you're referring to the dynamic range of the screen, which might have been the original interpretation, but most people these days think of the range of exposure that the sensor can handle. I first heard it in reference to Half Life: Lost Coast, but since then I've only heard it in reference to multiple exposures in photography.

I might be wrong, but I'm that the sensors in modern professional SLRs can handle much more difference in exposure latitude than smaller digicams and especially cell phone cameras, with film holding even more latitude. Though I cringe at most over-processed HDR-styled photos, this seems to be a valid use of the technique, overcoming the technical limitations of such a small sensor.

"I might be wrong, but I'm that the sensors in modern professional SLRs can handle much more difference in exposure latitude than smaller digicams and especially cell phone cameras, with film holding even more latitude."

Correct. Here's an example of 16mm negative of Kodak's Vision 3, for example, that shows the various meterings in the scene: http://motion.kodak.com/US/en/motion/Products/Production/Col.... It's easily 7 stops - I think you'd be hard pressed to pull off the same image on your iPhone camera (though I am interested to see how well the new HDR stuff works).

One comment I've read from photography tech types is that the correct term for this is "tone mapping" not "high dynamic range".

I don't think it's ever caught on outside of pedant circles, though. :)

We know that the iPhone will do on-the-fly tone mapping, but there's also a slim chance that it will store a proper HDR image (such as a 12-bit JPEG or OpenEXR) for later processing.

HDR and the tone-mapped results of HDR images have been used somewhat interchangeably for the last while (go look at flickr or deviantart). When someone shows you an 'HDR' image, its just 'understood' (or misunderstood...) as the result of tone mapping. Furthermore, when you start talking about video games, when people refer to HDR, it means that they're doing the tone-mapping on the fly.... and also conflating (an already conflated) HDR with light blooming.

And yeah, automatic tone-mapping can (CAN!) result in some hideous looking images. Used aggressively and without care, skin just turns to porcelain and every building against the sky now has a crazy halo around it.

Apple definitely did an excellent job of keeping a lid on the HDR addition to iOS 4.1. Many people seem to be thinking they're doing a bad job of letting new product info leak early, but I think this shows they are still doing a good job. I'm also really excited to see how well this feature works on my 3GS as well.

I have the Camera + app as well, and it works pretty well for me.

As far as Tap Tap Tap sneaking in that easter egg with using the volume buttons as activating the shutter, that was flat out a bad decision. They are not stupid people, and I'm sure they knew Apple would catch a whiff of this and pull the app from the app store. Considering the amount of revenue they pulled in (which is still not confirmed), they should have submitted an update to get it back into the store. There hasn't been any information on whether or not they plan on doing this, but I'm hopeful.

Maybe it was just a big PR stunt. If they wait a few weeks to resubmit the app they'll get a second wave of bloggers rejoicing about the return of the application citing it as the best iPhone camera app. They lose a few weeks of revenue but they may have calculated a big press bump makes up for it and then some.

I'm happy they haven't resubmitted it. I have the Easter Egg enabled and would rather keep the volume button shutter.

Of course, it would be stupid for them to not ramp that revenue stream back up.

"They're not sure how the built in feature will impact sales of TrueHDR, but they believe that there is no single 'best' way to achieve HDR and there is room for other apps in the market."

uh, until Apple removes your app for duplicating OS functionality...

One of the best-selling apps in the app store, Camera+, is pretty much nothing more than a replacement for the Camera application. I doubt Apple's going to freak out about HDR apps.

_was_ pretty much a replacement. The app is still banned from what I can see in iTunes. Considering that the app was making 250k a month according to their blog posts, the decision to add in the easter egg is one of the dumbest things I've seen recently.

I wonder if that was just one developers work, rather than a company decision? Would not like to be that guy/girl.

They haven't done that in forever...there was one high-profile rejection and nothing has happened since. Search for web browser in the App Store and see how many results you get (hint: a lot).

For clarity: The other comment thread refers to the fact that the developer submitted an application that allowed the user to take pictures by pressing the volume buttons, which violates the Apple Human Interface Guidelines by removing the actual volume increasing/decreasing functionality of the buttons. It was nicely rejected by Apple, but then the developer did an end-around and publicized a URL scheme that would launch their app and enable the button functionality anyway – the app was summarily pulled off the store, and oddly enough it looks like the developer has disappeared off the face of the earth. (Apple ninjas killed him?)

FWIW, the main developer over there wasn't well-respected in the iPhone community either. Not entirely sure why, but I saw him pick odd fights from the company Twitter account with other developers for reasons beyond my comprehension.

>HDR images are controversial. Some people hate them, and think it produces garish pictures. Others love the flexibility to shoot pictures in challenging lighting conditions.

Really? Since when? Pretty much anyone who has any concept of the limitations of camera tech thinks HDR is the only real option for simulating what / how people see the world. Sure you can do horrible things with it; you can do the same with any useful tool.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com