HDR (high dynamic range) imaging allows photographers access to a greater range of light levels between the darkest and lightest areas of an image. If you’ve ever taken a picture of a sunset over the mountains and bodies of water, you might notice that the area where the sun appears is very bright and washed-out, while the mountains and streams are very dark. HDR techniques can fix this and make the rock and water much more visible, while toning down the sun. When done right, and HDR’d image looks a lot more like what you can see with the naked eye.

On Wednesday, Apple released their highly anticipated 4.1 software update for the iPhone 3G, 3GS, and 4. The upgrade offers various features for all iPhone users, but you must either jailbreak your phone or own the latest iPhone 4 in order to take advantage of the new HDR photography option.

But, never fear. If you’re like me and own a 3G or 3GS, and you want to shoot HDR, there’s an app for that. In fact, there are several.

The one I’ve used for this piece is called “Pro HDR.” It works for iPhone 3GS or newer, and can be purchased for $1.99 via the App Store. It’s not perfect, but for two dollars worth of smartphone software, it does the trick pretty well.

Below are three pictures depicting my MacBook Pro and part of my dining room. The first is overexposed, so that you can see the dining room. The second is underexposed, and while the dining room is very dark, you can easily make out what I have up on my screen. (Click any image for a larger version):

Using Pro HDR, I was able to combine the images and use the best parts of each, all right on my iPhone.

If I wanted to, I could also use Pro HDR to further edit the end result by manually adjusting brightness, contrast, saturation and other image elements.

All in all, I would recommend Pro HDR to casual users who want to improve the look for their “mobile uploads” folders on Facebook. If you’re looking to take particularly stunning photos, I’d suggest investing in a real camera that can’t make phone calls.

Today, however, is special in its own way: Adobe has finally “officially” announced CS5 and is offering a bevy of information on all sorts of exciting new features. It turns out that I was right about some of the new HDR features that will allow users to simulate high-dynamic-range photography even with a single image file. For more information, check out the Adobe CS5 launch site:

Keep watching the above for further updates!

Edit: I’ve changed the embed URL to a page that doesn’t auto-play sound and video! This should make my blog far less annoying to visit now.

These “Adobe evangelists” will show off some cool new tools for art, design, development, photography and video that will be sure to get users very interested in what CS5 will have to offer.

In the meantime, Adobe is actively teasing devoted followers with “hints” of features to come, particularly with Photoshop. Here are some of my favorites:

High Dynamic Range

Speculation: It looks like Adobe Photoshop is going to offer some easy-to-use methods for simulating high dynamic range (HDR). HDR photography allows photographers access to a greater range of light levels between the darkest and lightest areas of an image. If you’ve ever taken a picture of a sunset over the mountains and bodies of water, you might notice that the area where the sun appears is very bright and washed-out, while the mountains and streams are very dark. HDR techniques can fix this and make the rock and water much more visible, while toning down the sun.

I suspect that Photoshop CS5 might have an “Auto HDR” feature that takes images–or even just a single image–like the one above-right and uses algorithms to emulate HDR photography (above-left). My hope, however, is that if such a feature exists, it will offer users the ability to adjust just how bright or dim specific parts of the final image will be.

Content-Aware Fill

The above video tells all. With CS5, Photoshop users will be able to synthesize textures in photographs with just a few mouse clicks. I guess I won’t have to use the clone and smudge tools quite so much anymore! Excuse me while I retrieve my jaw from the floor.

Puppet Warp

Puppet Warp: It’s as cool as it sounds. This new technology will allow users to distort and warp images with astounding accuracy as seen in the video above. Imagine using this in combination with Content-Aware Fill!

There goes my jaw again.