
The first/left-most photo was taken without HDR. In the next three examples the native camera app’s automatic HDR feature has been fairly conservative – which I like. It’s a matter of personal taste but my preference is to only use as much of any effect as is necessary, and ideally not so much that it is noticeable. The arch walls and the distant building are all well exposed with a reasonable exposure balance between them.Īs with most in-camera and post-processing photographic effects ‘less is more’. The results are far more appealing without looking artificial. Whilst these walls are now nicely exposed the increase in exposure has blown out the building in the distance.įor the next shot we’ve used the native camera app with HDR switched on. The next shot was exposed for the arch walls on the left and right. The first was taken without HDR and exposed for the building in the distance. Below is a series of identical photos of a castle. The most common scenario is where everything above the horizon is light and everything below is dark. That’s a scene which has both very dark and very bright elements in it.

The obvious time to use HDR is when you are faced with a high contrast scene. The more advanced HDR implementations allow you to decide to what extent the HDR effect is applied on a sliding scale. As it does this it gives priority to the non-white and non-black pixels in both images – meaning that detail which would otherwise be lost is saved. Then it automatically blends the two images together, pixel by pixel. The second is overexposed to ensure the detail in the darkest part of the scene are captured. The first is automatically underexposed to ensure the detail in the brightest parts of the scene are captured. It’s a clever technical feature available in most modern iPhone camera apps which takes two or more photos instead of just one. This is where HDR comes in – it creates images which have a higher dynamic range than normally possible.

This results in underexposed, overexposed or ‘flat’ images which aren’t very attractive and can appear amateurish.
SIMPLY HDR APP FULL
So when a camera (or a photographer) decides upon an exposure for a particular shot the camera usually has to sacrifice one or both ends of the full spectrum of dark to light. Unfortunately most cameras (even the most expensive ones) can’t capture pure black and pure white and every shade inbetween in the same shot. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and is a tool which helps your smartphone’s camera tame the shadows and the highlights in photographic images – often a problem area for even dedicated cameras.Ī camera’s ‘dynamic range’ is its ability to capture the darkest and lightest elements of a scene in the same shot. By the end of this article you should be able to go out and expertly take HDR iPhone photos with amazing results.
SIMPLY HDR APP HOW TO
In this article we’ll take a closer look at HDR photography and examine what HDR is, discover when and when not to use it, learn how to use HDR in a common native camera app and introduce other photo apps which excel at HDR.
SIMPLY HDR APP PROFESSIONAL
HDR photgraphy is a popular photographic technique which can be used to improve the photos you take with your iPhone and give more professional looking results.
