NeuralCam Aperture 4+

Great creation, just needs some UX polish

Kudos to the people who created this — I really appreciate the technology and efforts that went into making this.
I think the user experience could use some polish. First, after taking a picture, the entire app is blocked by a loading indicator that says “Processing” — perhaps this can be done in the background? At the very least, continuing to show the live viewfinder would be nice. Blocking the entire experience for 5+ seconds after every shot feels like a very choppy picture-taking experience.
Second, as someone who doesn’t use Instagram, the dedicated button in the in-app gallery is just extra noise. It seems redundant given that there’s a share button right next to it (and maybe this could be changed to the generic iOS share icon, rather than a “reply” icon).
Additionally, one thing that irks me is the extremely vague privacy policy. It’s very ambiguous and not clear what data of mine is being stored (which hopefully, is none).
That being said, this really is a great app, congratulations to the creators of it!

Developer Response ,

Hey kiwiko, thanks for the quality feedback! The UX is definitely something we're trying to improve, but it will take some time to add on top of what we already built. Regarding data privacy, we do not store or use your data, the only data we gather is the app usage in order to have statistics about our users (stuff like numbers of photos taken, location, etc), but this data is aggregated and cannot be traced back to a specific user. -Alex

iPhone Night Mode vs NeuralCam

I originally purchased NeuralCam to use on the XS Max as I didn’t know if I wanted to get an 11 Pro yet. For the XS Max (and probably all other iPhones prior to the 11) this app is amazing! Having the ability to shoot night/dark setting photos without having to upgrade is great. However, I did wonder how this app stacked up to iPhones official night mode. Well I upgraded to an 11 Pro Max, and the results are very close. iPhones night mode is amazing, but NeuralCam holds its own. The big differences I was able to see is that neuralcam takes a little bit longer to focus and process the picture than iPhones night mode. The results are pretty much the same, except I can’t tell if Neuralcam’s results are just a smidge darker or if they’re adding this warm tone to the picture. Either way, it’s a great purchase if your not going to be upgrading to an 11 but want night mode shooting. But I’d say even with the iPhone 11 it’d be worth a purchase since it does let you do night mode shooting with the ultra wide lens, and iPhones night mode won’t let you do that yet.

Just needs a few tweaks

After using NeuralCam a bit longer and comparing it to other apps that are supposed to do low light photography, I decided to rewrite my review. My main complaint was that it tends to blow out certain lighter tones and highlights. That is still an issue, and at times it tends to give results with too much yellow, but the brightness has pretty much become my only real complaint. I can adjust the yellows afterward. If you could perhaps have the ability to use some exposure compensation I think this app would be near perfect. I am amazed at how clean the images are, virtually no noise and great detail. I compared to the vividHDR and LowLight + in ProCamera and there is absolutely no doubt how much better NeuralCam is in my mind.

All I ask for really is to be able to tone down the brightness on the picture in general. I don’t think it needs just the highlights turned down because the balance seems great and would look odd if just the highlights were brought down.

Anyway, love what the app can do and if it could be more consistent and less bright it would easily be one of the best apps on my phone. Make it capable of doing what it does in portrait mode and wow, that would really be something.

Not regretting the purchase at all at this point and just hoping for a few tweaks to really dial it in. Would even be willing to pay for an upgrade that fixes the brightness issue.