PHOTO APPS IMPROVE ON REALITY

A key feature of the highly anticipated new BlackBerry Z10 smart phone reminds us that some of the most intriguing advances in cellphone technology have nothing to do with voice or communications. Rather, photography is where the excitement is.

With features such as time-shifting and context-aware cloning, smart phones are bringing new dimensions to photography.

It used to be that photography was the art of capturing a split second in time that, hopefully, would last forever. Digital software allowed us to tweak images -- adjust lighting or bring out detail from the shadows, for instance. But if your subject blinked or an uncooperative baby turned his head for a moment, there was no way to go back in time and redo the shot. Until now.

Here's how the Z10's Timeshift app works. You take pictures with BlackBerry the way you always have. But Timeshift actually goes into action before you even snap the photo. It's watching as you frame your subject and stores images recorded moments before you take the picture. It also silently continues capturing images for a couple of moments afterward.

When you call up your photo, if you find that a subject in your shot blinked, just tap on the face of that person. Timeshift will display a dial that, when scrolled, flips through other shots. When a clean image is found with the subject's eyes wide open, a simple tap locks in the new mug and pastes it seamlessly in place of the bad one. You might also select better smiles or a certain face tilt.

Your picture is now not simply a moment in time, but an undetectable blend of multiple neighboring moments.

A similar app, Group Photo (free), is available for iPhone users. You simply rub your finger and draw over the face you'd like to swap, tap on a better, substitute version of the face, and the app will take care of importing the substitute and ensuring it fits smoothly into the scene.

Along similar lines is a process soon to be offered by Sony Ericsson and Motorola. Instead of being used simply to swap out faces, the app called Remove gets rid of unexpected or unwanted intrusions into a picture.

Like Timeshift, it captures multiple shots. Remove then analyzes the image to see which pixels remained stationary -- the subject of the photo -- and which ones moved, in this instance, the passer-by and vehicle. It then digitally dissolves all of the pixels of the objects that moved and leaves behind the stationary background, pixels of which were captured from unobstructed moments. This all happens automatically, though you can tap on the intruders individually and watch as Remove erases them.

Time is the theme of other types of photo editing apps. Photo Copier (IOS, $1.99) transforms your images into paintings reflecting the textures, brush strokes and hues of the great masters -- Botticelli, da Vinci, Monet, Renoir, Vermeer -- or in the style of famous photographers such as Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz.

Are your images underexposed due to a lack of flash on your smart phone? Instaflash (IOS, 99 cents) will retroactively apply light to your photos and bring them close to what they would have looked like in full lighting.

And though it is not available on smart phones yet, a new technology employed by the futuristic Lytro camera captures scenes in such a manner that you can perfectly adjust the focus for near or distant objects after the image is taken.

Apps are bringing photographic magic to smart phones. They're inexpensive and they're a snap to use.

Credit: Peter Grad, who penned The PC Guy and Tech 3.0 columns, contributes articles on technology. Readers may contact him at [email protected].

Illustration

Caption: Tap again, and the groom -- with eyes open -- will be pasted seamlessly in place.