So part of the reason I really wanted this phone was that with an 8 MP camera, I figured this could be my "carrying around" camera. (I also have a Digital SLR)
Unfortunately, the quality of the Incredible's images is kind of disappointing, even for a phone. These are largeish PNG images, so be careful about clicking links on mobile browsers.
Exhibit A: Lame image quality
Yfrog Image : yfrog.com/50step1fp
But the good news is there's a fix that will make your Incredible's pictures look just as good or better than any other phone. The bad news is it takes an image editor and a little extra work.
So here's what you do.
1. Open up the camera application on the Incredible and hit the little tab on the left to bring up the settings.
2. Tap the Image Properties icon (it's the circle that's half full/half empty)
3. Turn the "Sharpness" dial down to the lowest setting.
4. Take pictures!
Exhibit B: A picture taken with the sharpness settings set to the lowest level.
Yfrog Image : yfrog.com/08step2yep
5. Bring this picture into an image editor like Photoshop or GIMP or Pixelmator or whatever floats your boat. I used Photoshop CS4.
6. Use the image editor to sharpen the image up so it looks nice.
Exhibit C: An image from the Incredible that beats the pants off the Nexus One, as it should!
Yfrog Image : yfrog.com/1qstep3sp
7. Now you don't feel like you got gypped in the camera department. Hooray!
Compare the three images I put in here. Maybe open up a couple browser tabs and switch back and forth. Notice how in the last one, the trees actually look like trees instead of horrible green carpet from the 1970s? Also notice how you can see the mortar between the bricks on the house? What an improvement! But why is the picture taken with Incredible's default settings so horrible?
The answer is cameras with small imaging sensors produce noisy, grainy images. This is true of almost any cell phone camera, and also true of most of the cheaper point-and-shoot cameras that can be had for $129 or so. In order to hide this, the cameras run an aggressive noise removal algorithm on their images before they even get saved to the card, which ostensibly produces more appealing images (I don't agree).
The noise removal algoritm usually leaves images looking a littly muddled and gummy, so then they turn right around and run a sharpening algorithm on top if it. I really hate that cameras do this, as it's the image-processing equivalent of drinking a shot of tequila and then following it up with a red bull so you don't feel the alcohol. It's better not to drink anything at all, right? That's basically what we're doing by turning down the sharpness setting on the Incredible.
So anyway, it looks like turning the sharpness slider down on the Incredible tones down both the noise-removal AND the sharpening. This is good, because it means we can set it to give us images that aren't completely ruined by the back-and-forth of noise removal and sharpening. Instead, we just get images that are a little bit soft, and that can be cleaned right up by Photoshop's Unsharp Mask filter, which does a WAY better job of sharpening than the internal algorithm used by the Incredible.
Here's another illustration, this time animated, and with indoor lighting.
http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/3131/htcincredibleimageproce.gif
Unfortunately, the quality of the Incredible's images is kind of disappointing, even for a phone. These are largeish PNG images, so be careful about clicking links on mobile browsers.
Exhibit A: Lame image quality
Yfrog Image : yfrog.com/50step1fp
But the good news is there's a fix that will make your Incredible's pictures look just as good or better than any other phone. The bad news is it takes an image editor and a little extra work.
So here's what you do.
1. Open up the camera application on the Incredible and hit the little tab on the left to bring up the settings.
2. Tap the Image Properties icon (it's the circle that's half full/half empty)
3. Turn the "Sharpness" dial down to the lowest setting.
4. Take pictures!
Exhibit B: A picture taken with the sharpness settings set to the lowest level.
Yfrog Image : yfrog.com/08step2yep
5. Bring this picture into an image editor like Photoshop or GIMP or Pixelmator or whatever floats your boat. I used Photoshop CS4.
6. Use the image editor to sharpen the image up so it looks nice.
Exhibit C: An image from the Incredible that beats the pants off the Nexus One, as it should!
Yfrog Image : yfrog.com/1qstep3sp
7. Now you don't feel like you got gypped in the camera department. Hooray!
Compare the three images I put in here. Maybe open up a couple browser tabs and switch back and forth. Notice how in the last one, the trees actually look like trees instead of horrible green carpet from the 1970s? Also notice how you can see the mortar between the bricks on the house? What an improvement! But why is the picture taken with Incredible's default settings so horrible?
The answer is cameras with small imaging sensors produce noisy, grainy images. This is true of almost any cell phone camera, and also true of most of the cheaper point-and-shoot cameras that can be had for $129 or so. In order to hide this, the cameras run an aggressive noise removal algorithm on their images before they even get saved to the card, which ostensibly produces more appealing images (I don't agree).
The noise removal algoritm usually leaves images looking a littly muddled and gummy, so then they turn right around and run a sharpening algorithm on top if it. I really hate that cameras do this, as it's the image-processing equivalent of drinking a shot of tequila and then following it up with a red bull so you don't feel the alcohol. It's better not to drink anything at all, right? That's basically what we're doing by turning down the sharpness setting on the Incredible.
So anyway, it looks like turning the sharpness slider down on the Incredible tones down both the noise-removal AND the sharpening. This is good, because it means we can set it to give us images that aren't completely ruined by the back-and-forth of noise removal and sharpening. Instead, we just get images that are a little bit soft, and that can be cleaned right up by Photoshop's Unsharp Mask filter, which does a WAY better job of sharpening than the internal algorithm used by the Incredible.
Here's another illustration, this time animated, and with indoor lighting.
http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/3131/htcincredibleimageproce.gif
Last edited: