iPad2 Camera App Replacement with live image enhancement & effects: Camera Boost

[psonice]

Yes, iPad2 only, and using the full power of that new A5 chip!

App store link: http://itunes.apple.com/app/camera-boost/id432017065

What is it? It's a replacement for the built-in Camera app, with some major innovations. The biggest: image enhancement options, filters and effects - all applied in realtime, directly to the live camera view at full quality!

This totally changes the way you use your camera. Now you can adjust the image on the fly, while shooting. Get it just so, THEN hit the photo button to take the shot. Continue shooting and changing enhancements and effects all the time, with no stopping to apply filters after shooting, and no waiting for effects to be applied. Everything is instant, and it's very easy to use.

App features:

• Live image enhancement! Control image contrast and exposure, color saturation, sharpness and much more - and see the results instantly in the live camera view.
• Many filters and effects. See the screenshots for some examples, and the App Store description for details.
• Full resolution images. The built-in camera app actually cuts your photos down to fit them on screen! Camera boost takes full sized (1280x720) photos.
• Full quality live preview. The live camera view is full resolution and quality, so what you see is exactly what you will get.
• Mix & match effects. Apply as many or as few as you want, and tweak away with the controls!
• Speed! Even at HD resolution with ALL effects turned on at once it's still blazing fast. Photos are instant - take several per second if you want!
• Supports front + rear cameras, both with 4x zoom
• Built-in photo album, viewer and sharing (email, Facebook and Flickr)

Screenshots:

Some of the color change + replacement options. You can change the colors with Hue adjustment, or Colorize to tint in the image, or use Select Color to drop the image to black and white except for a single color. You can of course mix these effects!

All of the adjustments are applied in realtime to the live camera view. These are in-app screenshots, showing various adjustments being applied.

You can create all kinds of looks and feels. The top photo has been Posterized (it uses a limited number of colors) and colorized to look sepia. The bottom version has been softened and changed to greyscale, for an old cinema look.

This one shows some of the image enhancement options. Exposure has been increased to brighten the image, and it's been sharpened. Color saturation is higher, to bring out the colors.

Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions here on the thread, or drop me an email - chris (at) interealtime.com . I'm looking to develop this app a lot, so feedback (good or bad!) is very welcome!

 

[psonice]

It's now available in all stores I think (maybe Hawaii and such are later?) and already in the top 100 photography apps in the US

**edit - make that top 50!**

 

[psonice]

5 promo codes posted in the promo code forum here: https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=12505201#post12505201

The app's been incredibly well received, it's averaging 4.5 star ratings across all stores, and managed to hit #6 paid photography app in the US (consider that it's ipad2 only, and iPad2 had only been on sale for a month or so!). It's been recommended by PadGadget, named as an iPadNewsHub top 10 iPad app, and included in Business Insider's top 10 camera apps.

I've got some pretty big updates coming for it soon too

 

[Donka]

Nice app, can create some cool effects but that fact you can do this real time when actually taking the picture is the real plus point. It would be good though if you could also use these effects to post process existing images - is this something that can be added?
It would also be nice to have a reset function to reset all active sliders back to their default position - I know they start at default each time the application is started but it could be a real time saver between pictures if you didn't want to apply the same effect to the next picture.
File management in the built in album is limited to a single picture at a time. I think this is something that needs beefed up to allow sharing/deleting multiple pictures at a time instead of one at a time as it is time consuming if you take a lot of pictures.

This is a very solid, stable application and you really can create some excellent images - camera quality aside. It would be great to see some kind of noise reduction built in to deal with the poor image sensor quality for still shots.

 

[psonice]

Thanks for the feedback!

Nice app, can create some cool effects but that fact you can do this real time when actually taking the picture is the real plus point. It would be good though if you could also use these effects to post process existing images - is this something that can be added?

This is actually kind of a tough one. Image loading + editing would be a pretty major change in the nature of the app. I'm considering it very seriously though, as a few people have requested it. It won't be in the next couple of updates, but it's possible further down the line.

It would also be nice to have a reset function to reset all active sliders back to their default position - I know they start at default each time the application is started but it could be a real time saver between pictures if you didn't want to apply the same effect to the next picture.

I'm planning a presets system that will fix this. Expect that fairly soon.

File management in the built in album is limited to a single picture at a time. I think this is something that needs beefed up to allow sharing/deleting multiple pictures at a time instead of one at a time as it is time consuming if you take a lot of pictures.

Yep, another one a few people have requested, and I'm well aware of this shortcoming myself. It'll come in the next few updates.

This is a very solid, stable application and you really can create some excellent images - camera quality aside. It would be great to see some kind of noise reduction built in to deal with the poor image sensor quality for still shots.

Thanks. Yes, again, noise reduction I'm investigating. There's a few different types of noise, so it's a bit more complex than I'd expected. I have a good improvement for the noise that appears with certain effects (like color negative), that should be in the first update. More general noise reduction might come a bit later, but this is pretty high priority.

Question though: Do you want noise reduction as an option, or just enabled by default? I actually quite like the noise in some cases, but obviously most of the time I don't want it. Maybe try to kill the noise generally, and add a noise effect?

 

[Donka]

Question though: Do you want noise reduction as an option, or just enabled by default? I actually quite like the noise in some cases, but obviously most of the time I don't want it. Maybe try to kill the noise generally, and add a noise effect?

I'm an amateur photographer and quite like noise in certain circumstances so I think I would prefer this as an option or the latter of suppressing noise by default but having an option of adding a noise effect. I wouldn't want it on by default if there was no way of disabling this or to bring the noise back to some degree.

 

[psonice]

I'm an amateur photographer and quite like noise in certain circumstances so I think I would prefer this as an option or the latter of suppressing noise by default but having an option of adding a noise effect. I wouldn't want it on by default if there was no way of disabling this or to bring the noise back to some degree.

Ok, optional it is. Thanks!

 

[psonice]

Camera Boost 2 has now been submitted to Apple for review and should be released in the next week or so. It's a major update.

New stuff in v2:

• Video. You can now record HD (960x720, 30fps) video with live effects. You can of course still use any number of effects, at the same time, and add/remove adjust effects even during recording!
• Presets. The 2nd most requested feature after video! It now has a preset manager, with a selection of built-in presets. You can edit them, and create your own.
• Noise reduction. Yes, finally clamp down on that grainy picture! Noise reduction is adjustable, and tries to preserve image detail as much as possible.
• New effects. HDR, colour balance (useful for making 'old film' looks, sepia and so on), two-tone and more.
• Higher quality. Many of the effects are much higher quality now, and image noise has been hugely reduced in a few.
• Tap to expose. Tap anywhere on screen to set the exposure correctly for that part of the picture, and the exposure is then locked.
• New interface. Much cleaner, easier to use layout, and everything is positioned close to your thumbs and out of the way of the picture. Some effects are now controlled by new 'track pads', where you slide your finger around in a box to adjust things like lighting and colour balance - it's MUCH better than sliders
• Unlimited Effect Engine. I've totally rewritten the core video engine over the last 6 months, and think it's likely the fastest on iOS by quite a long way. It supports a literally unlimited number of effects simultaneously, with no slow down (with a few caveats of course!)

It'll be a free update if you've purchased previously of course.

I'm hugely proud of this, technically I think it's way ahead of the other camera apps and the way you can now record live video while adjusting effects will get people producing some really creative stuff I reckon. Hope you all enjoy it

 

[psonice]

I've started work on the iPhone version of camera boost. Expect the same awesome realtime processing on the small screen in the next month or two

It'll be an universal app (that runs on both iPad and iPhone), and again a free upgrade. It'll require a 3GS or later, and I suspect it'll require an iPhone 5 for video recording (older phones will do still photography). That's not final - iOS 5 might make video on iPhone 3GS/4 possible, we'll see.