iOS Apps,  News

PureShot – Major Update Released Today

The latest update to the uber popular PureShot app from Jag.gr developers, the same ones as 645 Pro, 6×7 and 6×6 will be released a little later on today.

The developers explain:

‘The app remains much the same—feedback as been overwhelmingly positive so we didn’t want to mess with the core philosophy behind it—but we’ve responded to the demands of our customers by implementing:

* A sophisticated image-saving pipeline system that supports shooting lots of full-resolution, high-quality images

* Three-shot burst and bracket modes

* A faster-access menu system

* A Full Screen viewfinder option for iPhone and iPod touch with 3.5-inch display

We’ve posted more details below from their website on this update. It’s free, if you have previously downloaded PureShot, if not, you can download it here. It retails for $1.99/£1.49.

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From the developer’s blog:

‘Until now, PureShot—like most apps—just chucked its images at the Camera Roll and let Apple’s built-in processes sort out how they’d be saved. And that works just fine as along as you’re saving small images and doing so infrequently. However, the standard approach doesn’t cope too well with trying to save several images at once—which is what happens if you shoot quickly and especially if you shoot full-resolution images in a higher quality than standard, such as with PureShot’s MAX-Quality JPEGs or dRAW TIFFs. If the number of images being saved exceeds the maximum that the built-in buffer can handle, then everything goes awry.

So we’ve built, in essence, a system for pipelining the images. We don’t ask the standard “save-to-Camera-Roll” process to deal with any more than one shot at a time, with our internal system only feeding that process a new image when it’s ready for it.

The end result of this is that you can shoot lots and lots of full-resolution, high-quality images in sequence, and they’ll all get saved in due course.

It also provides a level of security. Should something cause a problem with your iPhone or iPad while PureShot is busy saving, you can re-start the app, and it will carry on saving files where it left off.

Burst and Bracket

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We’ve also added two new alternatives for what happens when you trigger the shutter release. By default, you shoot a single photograph (as you’d expect!). However, go to the Shutter settings menu and you can also opt for a three-shot burst or a three-shot bracket:

If you select the three-shot burst, each time you release the shutter you iPhone or iPad will take three photographs, one after the other, as fast as it can (which is really pretty fast on iPhone 5, if a bit less quick on older hardware).

The three-shot bracket is a little different: it’s lets you take three closely-grouped shots with different exposures. You may want to do this to provide “cover” in situations where exposure is tricky to assess, or to combine later into a single High Dynamic Range (HDR) photograph.

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With the three-shot bracket you get two (numbered) circles that let you select a spot-metered exposure point-of-inerest for the second and third shots of the sequence—here shown with the standard spot-metering point-of-interest indicator, although you can also take the “standard” shot with matrix metering. When you move these around the viewfinder you can seen the effect that their location will have as they temporarily “take over” the metering while you’re dragging them.

Once they’re where you want—and, if you choose to display the exposure information, you can be very precise and set them, say, 1 Ev apart—you release the shutter and three differently exposed shots are taken. Please be aware that there is a gap of just over a second between each shot because iPhones and iPads take time to adjust their exposure!

Going large

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You may have noticed a new button on the first screenshot, above (from an iPhone 4S). This is used to trigger the new Full Screen option for iPhone and iPod touch devices with 3.5-inch displays *:

 

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Press this button, and you get the biggest possible 4:3 viewfinder on your device, together with the bare minimum of controls needed for capturing your shot—the shutter release button and the AE-L, AF-L and WB-L buttons. If you need access to anything else, just tap the Full Screen button again and you’re back with the standard viewfinder.

This is a great addition for those who want to concentrate on the shot with as much visual information as possible.

Menu

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Going back to the first screenshot, you may also have noticed that the menu system has changed. The menu used to pop up over the entire display (a standard iOS “modal” view). However, that meant you had to navigate your way out of it once you’d changed a settings—two or three taps that weren’t really necessary. So we’ve put it inside the viewfinder (just as you’d find with a normal digital camera). Once you’ve made your change, just tap on the MENU button again (or, indeed, any other button) and it will be gone!

There’s lots more new in PureShot 2.0, but most of it is very much “under the covers”, designed to make the experience of taking pictures as pleasant—and effective—as possible’.

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Joanne Carter, creator of the world’s most popular mobile photography and art website— TheAppWhisperer.com— TheAppWhisperer platform has been a pivotal cyberspace for mobile artists of all abilities to learn about, to explore, to celebrate and to share mobile artworks. Joanne’s compassion, inclusivity, and humility are hallmarks in all that she does, and is particularly evident in the platform she has built. In her words, “We all have the potential to remove ourselves from the centre of any circle and to expand a sphere of compassion outward; to include everyone interested in mobile art, ensuring every artist is within reach”, she has said. Promotion of mobile artists and the art form as a primary medium in today’s art world, has become her life’s focus. She has presented lectures bolstering mobile artists and their art from as far away as the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea to closer to her home in the UK at Focus on Imaging. Her experience as a jurist for mobile art competitions includes: Portugal, Canada, US, S Korea, UK and Italy. And her travels pioneering the breadth of mobile art includes key events in: Frankfurt, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Paris, Brazil, London. Pioneering the world’s first mobile art online gallery - TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com has extended her reach even further, shipping from London, UK to clients in the US, Europe and The Far East to a global group of collectors looking for exclusive art to hang in their homes and offices. The online gallery specialises in prints for discerning collectors of unique, previously unseen signed limited edition art. Her journey towards becoming The App Whisperer, includes (but is not limited to) working for a paparazzi photo agency for several years and as a deputy editor for a photo print magazine. Her own freelance photographic journalistic work is also widely acclaimed. She has been published extensively both within the UK and the US in national and international titles. These include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Popular Photography & Imaging, dpreview, NikonPro, Which? and more recently with the BBC as a Contributor, Columnist at Vogue Italia and Contributing Editor at LensCulture. Her professional photography has also been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including Italy, Portugal and the UK. She is currently writing several books, all related to mobile art and is always open to requests for new commissions for either writing or photography projects or a combination of both. Please contact her at: joanne@theappwhisperer.com

2 Comments

  • Mike

    Still no B&W mode. I’m bummed. KitCam is now my go to app for highest quality imagery. Pity. I wanted to like this app as much as I like 6×6.