of HDR is giving you a massive case of of iOS envy, fear not -- similar effects can be achieved on Android devices.

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What's the Deal With HDR?

HDR stands for "High Dynamic Range," which refers to the range of brightness levels that exist in a scene -- from darkest, just before before complete black, to the lightest, just before total white.

Traditional HDR techniques involve combining multiple exposures containing a wide range of brightness into a single image. You literally take two or three (or more) photos with different light settings and stitch them together using software. The results can range from a barely noticeable exposure shift to highly surreal landscapes filled with deep, rich color.

This is what happens with the iPhone camera's new HDR compositing, except it's all automatic. When you take a picture, the iPhone processes three versions of the image: an underexposed version, a normally exposed version and an overexposed version. Then it combines these three images into one to increase the dynamic range (the intensity of the light) to give you a more accurate representation of the scene you’re shooting. You can read more about it in the Gadget Lab overview.

The iPhone takes a few seconds to process an HDR photo after snapping it, and you can ask it to save an unedited photo, as well as the HDR, if you want.

Doing It in Android

If you're lucky enough to have Android 2.2 installed, a new set of APIs included in the new OS update that allow apps to control exposure settings. This gives you the ability to snap multiple images at different exposures. However, thus far, we haven't seen any apps take advantage of these new features.

But now that HDR is going mainstream, look for Android developers to start filling in the gaps, particularly once the Froyo update is available on more Android phones.

In the meantime, as the saying goes, "fake it until you make it." Here are a couple of options for simulating HDR photos with your Android phone.

Photo Enhance

The Photo Enhance Pro app uses HDR tone-mapping techniques to add detail to your images -- it lightens the shadows and keeps the highlights from blowing out to white. This isn't real HDR, but software has gotten pretty good at simulating an HDR edit using a single image. Photo Enhance Pro does an admirable job, tone mapping your images to give them greater depth.

The results are very natural, and the closest (so far) you can get to the iPhone results.

Photo Enhance Pro is £3 (about USD$4.60). Photo Enhance is free, though it lacks the hi-res capabilities of its paid sibling.

Camera 360

The Camera 360 Pro app is a total camera replacement app for Android. Among its myriad of features (including tap-to-zoom) is an HDR setting that, like Photo Enhance, uses tone-mapping to fake the HDR look.

The results are more surreal and than the natural-looking iPhone or Photo Enhance pictures. There are settings you can tweak to ease the color shifting.

Camera 360 Pro is $4. The non-Pro version is free, but lacks some extra effects.

Others?

Know of a cool Android HDR app that isn't listed here? Log in and add it!

This page was last modified 00:21, 15 September 2010 by ralfred. Based on work by howto_admin.

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