Getting a bigger bang out of the iPhone camera

For the latest two iPhones, you can choose where the camera focuses on by tapping the screen prior to snapping the picture. If your dealing with dark/light areas, taping will change how the camera sees the whole area. Tapping dark will cause the brighter areas to wash out, tap the lighter area and the dark areas go black.

An app I use all the time when I want to take a picture that had light and dark areas is Pro HDR. I have written about it before. Using the app, you tap the bright area which the camera adjusts for, takes a picture. Then you tap the dark area, the camera adjusts, takes another pic, then marries the two together. It takes a bit longer and an extra couple finger taps but you get images that are just like what you would see with your eyes.

Pro HDR was just updated with an ‘auto’ option. Now, you tap once, the camera adjusts all through the range, goes back and snaps two images on it’s own, merges the two together and gives you a finished image.

iOS4 has given us a much faster camera action, which I enjoy when just snapping pics. When I have a bit more time and there are not moving objects, I use Pro HDR. It does require you stand still for about 10 seconds, but the output is well worth is.

Here is an example of the two images joining. Normally you would choose either outside or inside to be clear (viewable brightness, not focus). Pro HDR also aligns the two images since you most likely move a little between the shots being taken.

After merging and aligning, you are given a chance to adjust the overall new image to tune to what your looking for.

The final image is full size that the iPhone is able to do, no quality and size loss.

The above window shot was just to show something dramatic so you can see what is possible. More along the lines of what I use the app for every day is product and landscape shots. Below, normally you would have the wood or the MiFi bright and the other dark or washed out.  With this image, I did crop to fit my need using Photogene. An app that is fast for rotating, scaling and cropping.

Finally, a quick image from downtown. Again, just taking the picture without going through Pro HDR, you would have black trees that look like fuzzy areas or the building would be too bright to appreciate it.

iPhone Genius Scan shares printed text for free

Every day I come across text pages that I want to share out with folks. Even more often is our hard work on Whiteboards. There are several options to use your iPhone camera to take a picture, clean up and share out. I have bought them and wrote my thoughts here. Some have powerful alignment and image adjustment controls. Most end up creating a white background with rough text… enough for folks to get the idea of what you where sharing.

A pleasant surprise was finding the free app, Genius Scan. No excessive frills here… it does the basics and it does those very well.

This is an a screenshot of an actual document I was taking while at the accountant’s office.

The app attempts at finding the text area and recognize if the pages needs a bit of a twist to straighten the text. You can grab the corners and move/resize the box to best match what you where hoping to share.

You can choose how Genius Scan ‘sees’ the document so it has a better chance at giving you the results you want.

Below is the result from the image, alignment and auto clean up. The app runs rather quickly compared to most of the other options. Don’t like what you see, hit the ‘Back’ button and take another run at it…

Tapping the ‘share’ button allows you to save the image off to your ‘Camera Roll’ to treat as you would any other photograph. Or, you can insert the image in a new or document in progress. And of course, used a lot by me, share out via email.

This is an actual output from Genius Scan. There is no OCR engine built in, but you can use other apps that specialize in that. In my case, I’m interested in sharing what I saw as it was originally, not as editable text. Whiteboard successes for me has similar nice results.

A quick snap from a magazine… color and B&W chosen via ‘enhancement’ after the image was already aligned.

GTD on the iPhone with Desktop Sync

Firetask has been a favorite amongst my friends for doing GTD task management on the iPhone for year. I did a lengthy How To for a company that was rolling it out to a group as their way of moving from paper to electronic GTD work flow. Waiting to get permission to ‘reprint’ here…

Yesterday, there was great news via a preview and working copy of Firetask for the desktop. With the very important feature of syncing my lists between my iPhone and Mac via WiFi! The download txt with the software mentions ‘free upgrades’ after initial launch with would generally mean there is a plan to sell the software when it goes ‘live’. Till then though, I am able to quickly update my “Getting Things Done” lists via my desktop and sync out to my iPhone for complete mobility.

The iPhone version of Firetask offers much more than GTD task management of course. You can use it as a regular ToDo manager, it just happens to have a lot of extra features so you can truly tune your task planning.

“Use the “Today” tab for fast access to tasks due today or the next 5 days as well as to your next actionable task per project. Group tasks by “Categories” or “Projects” including a special “Waiting for” category for tracking tasks you have delegated. Use the “In-Tray” to quickly enter thoughts and ideas so that no single good idea gets ever lost again. Finally, use the “More” tab to access your personal task and project archives including GTD®-style “Someday” and “Trash” lists.”

Augmented Reality Space Invaders Gets You Hopping

I covered an augmented reality app yesterday that found us coffee and interesting points about town. In that post, I mentioned that you can get a few folks looking at you if you walk down the street looking at your iPhone screen. Add to that, twisting around to see what is around you for optional restaurants, etc…

Today I will take that one step further. Imagine the looks you will get if you bouncing around looking at your iPhone held above your head. Well, fun games can drive you to doing weird things. In the case of Look-Up, you may not notice the stares as you take on the invading space ships above and around the buildings next to you.

The concept is near the same to looking through the iPhone, seeing what the camera can see with the additions of coffee shop location facts. Now though, when you look through your iPhone, you can see the space ships that you must shoot down. The only way others around you will know what they are missing is if they also have the iPhone Look-Up app installed and play a multi player game.

For those that don’t want to stand and twist around 360 degrees, the game offers a ‘sitting’ mode where your only worried about 180 degrees in front of you. Watch out though, those pesky space invaders can be right over you!

A different take on seeing what is around you

I have covered a few Augmented Reality apps here over the last year. Most have a large selection of add in items that you can choose from to appear on the screen as you look through your iPhone’s camera. Fun stuff, particularly in a new city, as long as you don’t mind folks staring at you.

Ubique is another addition to the group that has some interesting features to it. A few that, while simple, make it a ‘first grab’ in my selection of near me options.

Like the many other options, you can choose from a list of what will show up on the screen. Pictures, Wikipedia, Bars and Restaurants – all via a spinner at the bottom of the screen. A nice feature is the map at the bottom of the screen while still seeing what is in front of your and the highlighted spots. Tapping any ‘W’ box in the lower part causes it to expand upward.  You can zoom in and out of a spot by pinching/expanding with two fingers on the screen.

Tipping your iPhone up a bit towards the sky will cause the map to disappear.

Tapping the Wikipedia after you have it selected as the tool being used will result in a list of spots that where highlighted on the screen so you can drill down for more specificts.

Twisting the lower dial to Restaurants causes the icons on the screen to change as well so you can quickly know that type of location your looking at. With the lower map showing, you can see what is off screen to either side or behind you by spinning the map with one finger.

Ubique also offers full screen map view by tipping the iPhone down to face at the street. It is little common sense touches like this that makes it a solution to get used. Great if your downtown and getting a lot of attention of holding your phone up… just drop it down flat and still know where your going.