Last Updated on 02/16/2011 by Nigel Paterson
- Appleâs iPad
is a great way to display photographs, whether to family and friends or to show to clients, and itâs easy to get images onto the device, either with the Camera Connection Kit (from Apple) or via a connection to your computer and even wirelessly using software such as Shuttersnitch. However, unless youâve spent time correcting your images on your computer and then transferred them, youâre basically stuck with the images as they were in camera, which isnât good enough: nearly every digital photograph will benefit from some correction and enhancement. Athentech Imaging has produced Perfectly Clear HD, its image enhancement software, to do just that on the iPad (as well as being a plug-in for PhotoShop, but weâll deal with that in a later article).
is a great way to display photographs, whether to family and friends or to show to clients, and itâs easy to get images onto the device, either with the Camera Connection Kit (from Apple) or via a connection to your computer and even wirelessly using software such as Shuttersnitch. However, unless youâve spent time correcting your images on your computer and then transferred them, youâre basically stuck with the images as they were in camera, which isnât good enough: nearly every digital photograph will benefit from some correction and enhancement. Athentech Imaging has produced Perfectly Clear HD, its image enhancement software, to do just that on the
Open an image in Perfectly Clear HD and it's displayed like this: on the left the original file, on the right the processed image. Features
Perfectly Clear HD on the iPad can quickly and easily improve contrast, correct a poor exposure, reduce noise, change white balance tint, sharpen and remove noise.One of the most compelling features is its skin tone correction, which softness and improves the appearance of skin tones, because lenses are too sharp and lighting too harsh to make many people look good.
Using Perfectly Clear is easy: launch the App, select the photo from the images on the iPad and it gets straight to work, applying the current preset. Once processed â this takes a number of seconds – it displays the corrected image with an overlay which you can slide from side-to-side which shows the original image. You can slide your finger across to see the changes in different parts of the image. You can also launch the display of sliders to change the way the image is corrected, giving you fine control over what the software is doing to your image. You can save the settings as a preset.
Opening the tools lets you tweak the image. The processed image is displayed. Once you are happy with an image in Perfectly Clear it can be emailed or uploaded to FaceBook or Twitter from the App itself. Obviously it can simply be saved back to the iPad.
Easy Correction
Perfectly Clear on the iPad offers a lot of image correction in an automated process for not much money. Itâs easy to use: Those learning the basics of digital post production will probably get the most out of it, but even for professionals itâs a way of making some quick changes to an image on the iPad to get it looking good, whether thatâs to show a client or your mum.
Perfectly clear is still only at version 1.0, but the main changes Iâll be looking for in future updates is better stability (it does crash occasionally, but no big deal, just re-launch), increased speed (which is also likely to be hardware dependant), batch processing, zooming and more tools for better fine-tuning.
Perfectly Clear for the iPad is easy to recommend at only $4.99 US ($7.99 in Australia, despite the two currencies being basically worth the same).
Perfectly clear is also available as an iPhone App. I havenât tried it, but Iâm guessing it would be awesome for images shot with the iPhone.
Available from the App Store.
