With this week’s announcement that HDR filtering was coming to iOS devices in the next revision (4.1), I thought I’d try taking a photo of my living room with my iPhone 4 and True HDR:

Not horrible. But, here’s the same angle as snapped by Pro HDR:

The difference is like night and day (or, indoors and outdoors). “True” gave better balance between dark and lighter areas of a scene, but “Pro” produced a substantially more vibrant photo. I needed to try it again. Again, with default settings in True HDR:

And, again with Pro HDR:

It was subsequently suggested that I take an outdoor photograph (where True HDR would allegedly shine). So, I walked outside and snapped the two following images. Adjusting for the brightest spot of the composition:

And adjusting for the darkest spot in the composition:

Here’s how Pro HDR handled the pair:

And this is how True HDR fared with the same two sample images:

Ick.

If I had a couple of bucks to spend again, I’d stick with Pro HDR. Not to say that it took perfect shots, but at least I’m given sliders to better adjust output.

I honestly wish I hadn’t purchased True HDR, as even in “enhanced” mode, it continuously left images looking flat and washed out, it always took longer to process, doesn’t have an adjustment mode, and also doesn’t allow you to save revisions of edits.