Simple HDR

We’re very excited to announce the release of Simple HDR to the App Store. Simple HDR is a unique iPhone app we developed in collaboration with Nick Campbell of Greyscalegorilla.

HDR Images Made Easy

Simple HDR is an iPhone app that works with the Ricoh Theta camera and makes it incredibly easy to shoot 360° high dynamic range (HDR) images. An HDR image captures a much wider range of brightness values that a regular photo, from the darkest shadows to the brightest highlights. And you can do some pretty amazing things with all that data. CG artists use them to digitally recreate the exact lighting and reflections in a scene, and photographers use them to create incredibly rich panoramic images. It used to take thousands of dollars worth of equipment, not to mention a lot of patience and expertise, to create these images. Simple HDR lets you do it with a very affordable camera in about 30 seconds.

Less UI is More

The app presented us with a unique challenge. Unlike most client projects, where we aim to provide a complete set of features, our goal with Simple HDR was to reduce the interface to the absolute minimum. So we shot hundreds of test photos to determine the optimal settings for the camera. The result is a clean, intuitive interface that lets the user choose one of two modes depending on their needs. We use a simple graphical language with carefully chosen animation to reinforce how the app works.