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Hdr/hd photography
- Thread starter Yathushan
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- htc desire
Phenomenological
Android Expert
Ok, first off I'm going to have to explain to you what those are, since you clearly don't know. 
720p is a video format. It has nothing to do with pictures, and a 720p picture is tiny. The desire takes far, far higher resolution photos than that, so you do not want 720p photos. Put that thought out of your head.
HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and is a technique where one or more images are manipulated and combined to produce more even lighting accross the images and reduce clipped highlights in high contrast scenes. It can work well when executed subtly by a decent photographer using a tripod and shooting in RAW format, but you aren't going to get a vast improvement on a phone camera.
That said, I believe there are apps out there that allow you to take HDR photos if you wish, tough you'll have to wait for someone else to tell you what they are. I'm just here to give you some background.
720p is a video format. It has nothing to do with pictures, and a 720p picture is tiny. The desire takes far, far higher resolution photos than that, so you do not want 720p photos. Put that thought out of your head.
HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and is a technique where one or more images are manipulated and combined to produce more even lighting accross the images and reduce clipped highlights in high contrast scenes. It can work well when executed subtly by a decent photographer using a tripod and shooting in RAW format, but you aren't going to get a vast improvement on a phone camera.
That said, I believe there are apps out there that allow you to take HDR photos if you wish, tough you'll have to wait for someone else to tell you what they are. I'm just here to give you some background.
Phenomological is right, to a point.
You dont need a tripod, so long as you are only making a 'pseudo' HDR image, and you dont need to shoot in RAW format. because what most people mean when they say HDR photography, they really mean tonemapping.
Tonemapping does this to a photograph..
Original (from my Desire)
Subtle tonemapping
What most people think/want..Ugly IMO
each of those tonemapped images took about a minute and a half to render using a rather lowly 3800 Mhz dual core processor, any HDR software for an android phone would eat your already sucked and chewed battery life to the bone!
Go get a free one and do your rendering on the PC.
You dont need a tripod, so long as you are only making a 'pseudo' HDR image, and you dont need to shoot in RAW format. because what most people mean when they say HDR photography, they really mean tonemapping.
Tonemapping does this to a photograph..
Original (from my Desire)
Subtle tonemapping
What most people think/want..Ugly IMO
each of those tonemapped images took about a minute and a half to render using a rather lowly 3800 Mhz dual core processor, any HDR software for an android phone would eat your already sucked and chewed battery life to the bone!
Go get a free one and do your rendering on the PC.
williamj1
Android Enthusiast
Sorry to bring this up but it's inevitable. Don't get me wrong, I love my desire and wouldn't trade it for an iphone in a million years....
but the iphone sucessfully does HDR and it doesn't require a stupidly large processor and use up all the battery. The iphone feature is actually (and somewhat annoyingly) very effective and successful. So it can be done.
As it stands, in my opinion its completely possible on an android mobile device - the app or feature just hasn't been made yet.
freefall
Well-Known Member
BarnumC: thats all fine on a photo of a chair lit evenly with virtually no dynamic range to be used throughout the scene. A good way to illustrate your point will be a photograph of a scene with some dark foreground, well lit mid ground and then a nice over exposed sky. Then try anew make that jpeg into a decent HDR photo.
I could be wrong here but doesn't the iPhone hdr software actually alter the exposure when it does its thing? I've seem some alright resupts with it.
I could be wrong here but doesn't the iPhone hdr software actually alter the exposure when it does its thing? I've seem some alright resupts with it.
Thanks for the heads up on the iphone app. Will have to look as to how sucessful it is, Theres a point n shoot Sony that does it, but it only makes a simple rendered image from the three (or is it 5??) n + and - images. is there much tonemapping allowed on the iphone I wonder, or do you just get highlighted shadows and detail in the overs?
freefall you too are correct, I questioned the OP requirement on HDR vs Tonemapping. My bad, gonna do a better example.
freefall you too are correct, I questioned the OP requirement on HDR vs Tonemapping. My bad, gonna do a better example.
benjiharris
Member
Ok, to clear this up briefly - to do a true HDR on the Desire would be a tough task....a true HDR require multiple photos of the same scene to lay on top of each other to obtain a high dynamic range and requires a great deal of processing. When taking the photos, you generally do need a tripod as you are going to be layering the photos on top of each other so if they're not identical you may get some overlap.
The 'pseudo' way as Barnum C explains is a way to do it artificially by changing the exposure on one picture after it has been taken and layering them on top of each other. It is not a true HDR but does boost the dynamic range of a photo. And it does not require a tripod as you use one picture, it does not require as much processing and is easily manageable by a phone.
The way the iPhone probably does it is through the method just mentioned - it just takes one photo, replicates it, alters the exposure and layers them on top of each other.
So going back to the original question - yes there is an APP which can create an HDR like image - called 'Camera 360' - search for it in the market. It takes the photo and then takes about 30-45secs to process the image. During this time I assume it is most likely replicating the photo to do what I described the iPhone does earlier. So it is not a true HDR and neither is the iPhone as to do a real HDR on a phone would be quite tricky.
I hope this clears this up for you Yathushan - just search for 'Camera 360' in the market. Also 'Fx Camera' is a cool app. It doesn't do HDR but has some cool effects for photos.
There is Retro camera, but I dont want an App to make my photos look shit so I can act like those pretentious iPhone tossers with their Hipstermatic shots of boring objects!
The 'pseudo' way as Barnum C explains is a way to do it artificially by changing the exposure on one picture after it has been taken and layering them on top of each other. It is not a true HDR but does boost the dynamic range of a photo. And it does not require a tripod as you use one picture, it does not require as much processing and is easily manageable by a phone.
The way the iPhone probably does it is through the method just mentioned - it just takes one photo, replicates it, alters the exposure and layers them on top of each other.
So going back to the original question - yes there is an APP which can create an HDR like image - called 'Camera 360' - search for it in the market. It takes the photo and then takes about 30-45secs to process the image. During this time I assume it is most likely replicating the photo to do what I described the iPhone does earlier. So it is not a true HDR and neither is the iPhone as to do a real HDR on a phone would be quite tricky.
I hope this clears this up for you Yathushan - just search for 'Camera 360' in the market. Also 'Fx Camera' is a cool app. It doesn't do HDR but has some cool effects for photos.
There is Retro camera, but I dont want an App to make my photos look shit so I can act like those pretentious iPhone tossers with their Hipstermatic shots of boring objects!
Too Late!!
Just been looking around the iphone capabilities and found out it takes two images and tonemaps the pair, and from the results I have seen they are rather good! saying that, others have been mediocre to poor, but the majority are good.
benjiharris spotted the one I found, but there has been reports of 360 draining the battery substantially, there is another app called Photo Enhance Pro HDR Photography On Android | Geeky Gadgets
which uses pseudo HDR
True HDR does require a better class of sensor than the piffling Cmos chip were all using
Just been looking around the iphone capabilities and found out it takes two images and tonemaps the pair, and from the results I have seen they are rather good! saying that, others have been mediocre to poor, but the majority are good.
benjiharris spotted the one I found, but there has been reports of 360 draining the battery substantially, there is another app called Photo Enhance Pro HDR Photography On Android | Geeky Gadgets
which uses pseudo HDR
True HDR does require a better class of sensor than the piffling Cmos chip were all using
benjiharris
Member
Haha, I just went into *#*#4636#*#* to see what was hammering my battery today...turns out it was 360 Camera! It absolutely bums your CPU that app, thats been uninstalled straight away! Photo enhance looks ok, just had a little play with a demo version of Vignette too, that seems quite a good app with a nice UI and it can do fake HDR. Cant save to high res in the demo version though!