HDR comes built into iOS 4.1, bad news for developers?

Apple’s music event yesterday saw the introduction of some new products and a few new features to iOS. One of these features for the iPhone 4 and new iPod Touch was HDR photography.

The HDR (High Dynamic Range) feature being introduced on iOS 4.1 takes 3 photos instead of 1, all at different exposures. These 3 photos are then combined so that your photo comes out at optimum quality, with very little lighting problems. It can come in very handy in sunny weather outside, and with landscape photography.

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Among the many photography programs in the App Store, HDR apps make up a lot of them. The iOS platform was a great business opportunity for these developers (as it is for many developers). Now with the introduction of HDR photography built into the standard camera app in iOS 4.1, these businesses could be threatened.

TrueHDR, an app for the iPhone that takes HDR photos has been available on the App Store for many months reportedly works quite well, so whether Apple’s built-in HDR feature will rival it is unclear.

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The developers aren’t certain about how this will affect sales of TrueHDR, but they believe there is still room for other apps in the App Store, as there is no single “best” way to achieve HDR. They have just updated TrueHDR to include automated exposure and rapid auto-capture.

The market for photography apps may not necessarily be affected too much, as many HDR apps (including TrueHDR) have other features that aren’t found in Apple’s stock camera app. We’ll have to see what happens once iOS 4.1 arrives.

Are you excited about native HDR, or do you plan to stick to a third-party app? (And if so, which one?) Let us know what you think in the comment below.

Via: TUAW