ClearCam – sharper, 4 megapixel photos with your iPhone
Author: occipital // Category: Apps, Repository
BigBoss Edit: If this was crashing for you, it was probably fixed on 1.0.2. Congratulations to Occipital on this nice app. I think this is one of the most innovative apps on the iPhone. It finally takes the crappy camera and does something pretty ok with it. I plan to update my reasons to jailbreak with this.
At Occipital, we’ve been working really hard on a better camera application for the iPhone, called ClearCam, and we finally launched it on BigBoss/Cydia!
ClearCam takes 6 photos in 2.5 seconds, fuses them together using an algorithm called super resolution, and creates a sharper, 4 megapixel photo with less noise. There is also a QuickShot mode that takes 4 photos in under 2 seconds and saves the sharpest to the camera roll.
Here is a normal iPhone photo:
And here is the same view, enhanced with ClearCam:
We spent a lot of time optimizing our code to make it run fast enough on the iPhone. A lot of our effort went into being able to align photos precisely with sub-pixel accuracy (required for super resolution), and to also do it fast.
You can check out more information at our site. There’s also a pretty good post about it here.
If you’ve been hoping for better photos from your iPhone, give ClearCam a try. If you really like it, feel free to buy it and support some hungry programmers =).
BigBoss Authors: Mark Bruce & Kory LeeTags: camera, clearcam, occipital, super resolution
February 3rd, 2009 at 7:08 am
I really like the concept. I tried it this morning and had a few crash problems in Enhanced mode. My one immediate suggestion would be to make the whole screen the shutter button, much like snapture, rather than a small button like the native app. Will keep trying it out….
February 3rd, 2009 at 8:54 am
Can’t activate… No respons for support.
Piece of …..
February 3rd, 2009 at 9:08 am
Downloaded it last night. Never managed to take a single picture before app crashed. Back to the drawing board…
February 3rd, 2009 at 9:14 am
Good idea.
Too bad the activation isn’t working.
Would like to try out the 15 day trial but it always says servers are down.
February 3rd, 2009 at 9:14 am
this app is actaully good. been playing around with it this morning, and been comparing with snapture and iphone normal cam.
and must say that the pictures are alot better and clearer even when playback on 50in screen.
once again a good app, gotta buy this one.
oh by the way i never had a single crash/or activation problem
February 3rd, 2009 at 9:52 am
awesome quality compared to iphone cam. nice feature to select the sharpest pic out of 6.
February 3rd, 2009 at 10:11 am
So let me get this straight, we are supposed to hold the camera still for 2.5 seconds while the program collects all these pictures?
Good luck.
Shooting still life is one thing (that clock) where you can brace the camera against something; taking pictures while most elements in the scene are moving is another story.
February 3rd, 2009 at 10:40 am
Downloaded it this am. Was able to take a picture in enhanced mode, but it took forever as the screen froze. Then on the second try it crashed.
February 3rd, 2009 at 11:46 am
Thank You For The App !
I actually use it with free account, really NICE !
Keep the good work :]
February 4th, 2009 at 7:30 am
It’s not quite like you think. You hold it humanly still, not perfectly still. The app will figure out the offsets and overlay it appropriately. Actually try it before knocking it. This is very innovative. For the first time you can take some ok pictures with the camera (in decent light).
February 4th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Update: upgraded to 1.0.2 this morning and was able to take some pictures. They do look sharper than the stock camera. Need to play around a little more…
February 4th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Works better after the update today.. Kinda..
Was able to activate the free trial
Too bad it counts from the day you installed it.
So having a broken app for 2 days cut my free trial down to 13 days. How lame.
Still needs some work too. It drops back to the springboard at random. Sometimes takes a few pics fine, other times it drops out after the first shot or during the align/enhance stages.
February 4th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Upgraded it today. Much faster great program. Picture quality is awesome. A+++ I will be purchasing
February 4th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
ClearCam rocks!
February 4th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
so i’m guessing that I cant use this app to take pics at a basketball game
February 4th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
I’m a amateur photographer. I take about 1000 pictures a week! I jumped on this app right away. I’ve set up various situation using this app and the actual crappy Apple app. After taking 50 pictures with both apps (meaning stock app and ClearCam) with the same setup. Yep tripod for stability.
Results … I’m not really convinced that the results are that great. I did not really see that much improvement. Maybe a little under low light situations.
Being an optimus. I will keep a positive mind and keep on testing. I would really love a better camera on this phone, which should have been included in the first place.
February 4th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Not bad. It’s a little better, but in everyday life shooting pics at random things, it’s not that much better.
If it took the 4 or 6 pics quicker, and it automatically aligned/enhanced ‘em, they’d have more support IMO.
Having to manually do the enhanced photo is too much work for not enough leisure.
Not bad though.
February 4th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
I must say that this app is nice. I like that the enhanced mode boosts the quality while increasing resolution (yes i checked…they are 4 megapixel pics). While I cant use this for action shots, it should do good on portrait-type shots.
February 5th, 2009 at 1:56 am
Let us know what features you guys would like to see.
Here are some possibilities:
- Auto-process button –> Align+Enhance+Save
- Faster enhancement
- More noise reduction
- Save the 6 exposures to camera roll at once
February 5th, 2009 at 2:29 am
Did you get the activation working? We’ve responded to all of the support emails we received. Let me know if you’re still having trouble.
February 5th, 2009 at 2:31 am
What’s your UDID? i’ll reset your trial to 15 days.
You’re right there are sporadic problems during enhance. You should be able to restart and enhance OK afterward. We’re working on this for 1.0.3.
February 5th, 2009 at 2:32 am
(PS you can just give me the first few digits of your UDID or email the whole thing to jeff at occipital )
February 5th, 2009 at 2:34 am
Another possible feature:
- Email the full-res photo within ClearCam (iPhone resizes to 800×600 normally)
February 5th, 2009 at 2:38 am
Well, give it a try. You can capture (and save individually, if you like) 6 photos in 2.5 sec typically. So, one every 0.4 seconds. It’s similar to a 3 fps mode on a “real” digital camera.
Let me know if you would find it useful to be able to save the entire batch (without enhancing necessarily) to the camera roll at once. Now you need to do them individually.
February 5th, 2009 at 5:41 am
4 or 6 pics in queu but it only show 1 by 1. It would be great to browse all in one page to compare and choose one. Normally we do not need all the same/similar pics, don’t we?
February 5th, 2009 at 6:36 am
Hi, can anyone pls tell me how do i get this ClearCam. i can’t find it in Cydia. I have a 2G phone with 1.1.4 software installed
February 5th, 2009 at 8:01 am
You need 2.x firmware
February 5th, 2009 at 9:00 am
Jeff,
Those sound like great addition features!
Can you also consolidate the shutter sounds? While taking an enhanced or quickshot, it’s not very appealing to the user to have 6 shutter sounds everytime they want to shoot with ClearCam.
-Brandon
February 5th, 2009 at 10:10 am
It’s no longer listing in Cydia for any repository that I know of. What’s the deal? Did they take it back down?
February 6th, 2009 at 12:40 am
ah OK, tks mate
February 6th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Tried out the app. After the second run, it froze up on me. I’m guessing that it’s a memory thing since it’s capturing so many images and toying with them in memory.
The resulting image when it does work is definitely improved, though!
February 7th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
Why do not we realease free version like as Camera for iphone ?
February 8th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Not sure about the enhancement, I don’t really see a diferrence. Quickshot is useful as it saves the clearest of 4 shots. Would buy it if it cost $5 or less (its both at the high end of iPhone App. price and needs jailbraking which means no guarantee to my investment)
February 9th, 2009 at 8:58 am
Looks like this is vaporware. There are no repositories listing it for download. Article is bogus.
February 10th, 2009 at 12:59 am
I like it, but crash crash CRASH!
Snapture has become flakey too of late … who actually has enough RAM in their phone to run these apps reliably?
I just have SMBsettings and a few different icons with Winterboard in memory, which hardly seems excessive :(
February 11th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
I’m one of the developers and it’s definitely not vaporware. You can find it by searching for “ClearCam” on Cydia.
February 15th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Yeah this app crashes quite a bit. And that is a big issue when you actually want to take a picture of an event or something. Very unstable. I’m sure it has something to do with memory, since storing 6 pictures takes a lot of memory, but if they can find out a way to make it use less resources, that would be golden.
February 25th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Pleased up grade my mobile
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:34 pm
I cannot find clearcam anywhere in cydia! What can i do?
I have a Jailbroken Iphone 2G 2.2
April 3rd, 2009 at 2:02 am
at precise moment i’ve bought the software…: can not e-mail pictures no more?!…
Request help for this issue at your earliest convenience, or directions to get my money back.
Tks In advance
Sérgio
May 17th, 2009 at 6:02 am
I want about Itone is not working and how to oprete itone pleas help me
May 17th, 2009 at 6:05 am
I want about Itone is not working and how to oprete itone pleas help me s
June 21st, 2009 at 4:06 pm
How the h@ck can I download the clearcam photos to my PC? I see that there is a folder called .\private\var\mobile\Library\ClearCam\Sets that contains hundreds of files but I want to copy only the enhanced photos and I could not find them. If I am unable to copy the photois to my PC then what is the point of this application?
August 12th, 2009 at 12:48 am
installed it from cydia on 3GS but it crashes b4 i could use it. Kindly help me with it.
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:06 am
dude my clear cam is not working
everytime i open it, it just crashes
any help??
September 8th, 2009 at 6:29 am
Still can’t get this to work. I have 3GS with 3.0.1. I would definately buy it, but everytime I open it, it crashes back to the springboard. I have other cydia apps installed but this just won’t work. Uninstall, reinstall, respring and reboot. No combination of steps has worked. Any help would be nice.
November 15th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Just got all excited about ClearCam and downloaded from xsellize in Cydia, but it keeps crashing. I read somewhere that it might be conlicting with the 3GS built in camera. I hope they fix this soon!
November 18th, 2009 at 5:24 am
Hi I would like to know where saved photo stored?? I have to backup photos.
I see application folder but photo is not there.please let me know, how you backup photos
December 22nd, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Downloaded and it immediately crashes to springboard. Have a 3gs with is 3.1. Why dies it crash?
November 13th, 2011 at 1:09 am
Got mine from Apple Store in the only version offered. Enhanced does not work for me. I can take the pics, but they never appear in iPhoto. Only QuickCam pics do. What am I missing?
February 28th, 2012 at 3:21 pm
I have iphone 4s with iOS5.
The enhanced mode only produce a textured image with similar color tune but it is not the real image I take.
What can I do to make it work?
Thanks.