True HDR iPhone Photo App is Awesome.

The iPhone 3GS’ feature to tap for setting focus and exposure is great, allowing for better photos than previous iPhones. However, sometimes I’m stuck with a choice of extreme lights or darks, and find myself tapping something in the middle for a rather bland compromise.

Not any more.

See the photo below of the view out my office window. In this case I focused on the ground, which looks good, but at the expense of a too-white sky that lacks contrast.

Below is a photo of the same scene, this time focused on the sky. It’s bluer, and you can better make out the hazy outline of Mt. Santiago, but at the expense of the ground looking more in shadow.

Now see the photo below, which is the result of “merging” the above two photos in True HDR. It’s a nice combination of the best exposures from both photos. Sweet.

No, this is not a substitute for better exposure in the first place. However, in most cases it’s better than under- or over-exposing the scene and trying to use the brightness/contrast settings of an iPhone app like Photogene to fix the bad parts. While no miracle worker, True HDR simply works better for moderate to large exposure discrepancies than any iPhone post-processing app I’ve seen.

One drawback is that the output is limited to 960×960 resolution, with “full resolution” promised in a later update. Also note that this app requires an iPhone 3GS because the whole point is to capture two pictures with exposure “extremes” via the tap-to-focus feature.

For me this was a no-brainer purchase, especially at only $2. If you take a lot of photos with your iPhone 3GS, or want to, this is a great app to have in your toolkit.