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Did Apple Acquire Imsense Ltd for HDR Capabilities in iOS 4.1?
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Uh, people who buy DSLRs want CONTROL over the HDR/tone-mapping process. There are tons of Photoshop plugins and great control in Lightroom, Aperture, etc that do this, and all of them provide far more control over the process than the iPhone method does. Many cameras, even point-and-shoots, do what is called "exposure bracketing" which is what the iPhone is doing when it takes three pictures. But even the point-and-shoots provide control over the exposure range which is captured.
In other words, people who actually care about the results they want to achieve use better tools that have been around for years.
The phone takes 3 images and merges them internally into one true HDR image. This image is not saved since your phone and most monitors would be unable to display the image. Instead it's processed and tone mapped to create a compressed dynamic range image that can be displayed by your screen. The magic comes from how the image is processed. It's a complex algorithm since the image can not be corrected uniformly. Some ares are lightened while others are darkened. The image is then color corrected. Most automatic HDR algorithms are very slow and create unnatural looking results. Apple has hit a good balance of subtlety while extending the perceived range.
If you skipped the HDR step and used just a single exposure the result would look similar in the color values; however, it would be very grainy in the bright and dark areas that were beyond the limits of the sensor.
Apple is not targeting this as an artistic tool, rather it's a tool to improve casual photos.
If you skipped the HDR step and used just a single exposure the result would look similar in the color values; however, it would be very grainy in the bright and dark areas that were beyond the limits of the sensor.
Apple is not targeting this as an artistic tool, rather it's a tool to improve casual photos.
This is more like it. A remarkably clever find!
Yah. Another eight more patents for Apple.
http://imphoto.readikus.com/
Yah. Another eight more patents for Apple.
http://imphoto.readikus.com/
Interesting but irrelevant because we are talking about consumer level point and shoot cameras here like the iPhone 4. This feature gives an end user the general effect of properly done HDR without requiring expensive tools like Photoshop or requiring a steep learning curve. The professional tools may indeed offer more flexibility and control over the the process which can result in superior results to this software but the majority of "HDR" on the net is done by amateurs creating a striking but "cartoon" effect rather than enhanced realism. Apple has basically delivered idiot proof hyper-realism HDR without requiring a user to manually adjust settings. They just get to enjoy the end result. Internally, the software may indeed take three exposures in rapid succession in RAW format and compose them into a JPG at the end of the process.
If you want to do HDR real, be prepared to pay a lot of money for a DSLR camera, Photoshop and ensure that you have a background in photography and know how to process HDR properly in photoshop. If you don't know what you are doing, you will end up with crappy cartoons after spending a lot of effort and money.
The couldn't have implemented this even on the iPod touch's camera? I dont' care if it's low res if it takes good pics.
HDR is a software hack for cheapo cell phone cameras. DSLR's and other nice cameras have nice lenses that take better quality pictures that people then use prosumer or pro software to make even better
i know people with DSLR's and smart phones and an iphone/android phone won't replace a dslr for what they use it for
I would reset my 2-year rule to start from the iphone 4, then iphone 6 and so on...
That's brilliant! Why didn't I think of that? Now if only I can convince my wife that we can start buying a new phone every two years _after_ upgrading to the iPhone-4.
Nice lenses don't have an affect on the dynamic range of the sensor in your camera. HDR really exists because the dynamic range of CMOS sensors is worse than the range of exposures people were able to achieve with some films.
Another person who seems to think Apple somehow "invented" some amazing new technology.
That's brilliant! Why didn't I think of that? Now if only I can convince my wife that we can start buying a new phone every two years _after_ upgrading to the iPhone-4.
Me and my wife are on this same plan, off-set by a year so we leapfrog each other. This way we get one of each iPhone model. She got a 3GS last year, and I just upgraded from a 3G.
Yet another person who does not "get it". I don't think anyone is suggesting that Apple "invented" HDR or that they invented this particular implementation because they obviously bought the company that did create this algorithm.
What Apple did was take that raw implementation and create a dead easy way to use it from within the iPhone photo application. That is what Apple does best. They take existing technology like unix and make it accessible to the average Joe.
No, I get it. I'm just tired of people getting all excited every time Apple takes a dump. Especially when better solutions exist. And now Apple has just delivered a gigantic "F-U" to the developers of those better solutions.
MAN this cool-aid is TASTY!! It's brown and lumpy, and kinda warm and smells funny, but WOW!
Totally agree. If you want to see license montage, check out other big boys like Intel, AMD, Ford, GM and even Oracle. They all have a big purse for picking up technical gem here and there developed out of a small thousand to four thousand square foot office suite. Many developers have made a very successful career coming up with a good idea, selling it off and getting a younger wife / mistress / girlfriend in the process.
I am using that line in my next email when some marketing puke makes a technology recommendation to me. Love it!
Where do you think those Palm engineers were poched from in the first place?
Yeah, exactly ....
No. There's no way you can extract information from a photo that isn't there in the first place. That is, you can't bring out detail from a sky that is burnt out because of overexposure, or recreate details that have been lost in utter blackness in an underexposed photo. If that were possible through software processing all cameras would have that sort of software-correction built into their image processing engines. You need more than one exposure to do HDR.
The iPhone 4 (with HDR in iOS 4.1) takes three seperate pictures in rapid succession, one normally exposed, one underexposed, and one overexposed. What the HDR software then does is to automate the proces of combining these three different exposures into one HDR image. A proces which you'd normally have to do on you Mac or PC in post processing.
Hope that was helpful? *s*
being creative with (technical) limitations = art
How will art look like when everything is visualized exactly the way we see it?
But for the purpose of a device that captures everyday moments the way we would like to remember them, the iPhone HDR function is great!
B
i don't doubt it. though i have to admit, in my experience so far, i'm not really liking HDR on my iPhone so far