ProShot updates with better startup times, increased zoom, and more

By Joseph Keller
published

Camera app ProShot has been updated, adding a number of new features and improvements. Startup time has been improved significantly and zoom has been increased, among other things.

ProShot has added a single-finger zoom. Users just need to swipe up to zoom in, and down to zoom out. The maximum zoom has also been increased to 10x. Additionally, you can now save your 20 or 41MP photos directly to your camera roll. ProShot has also added a second black and white mode and keyboard input for RGB sliders in the filter editor. The behavior of the reset button in the filter editor has also changed, and it now generates random filters.

ProShot version 5.5

  • Significant improvement to startup time
  • Added single-finger zoom (up to zoom in, down to zoom out), max zoom increased to 10X
  • Can now save 20/41MP images directly to your camera roll (Lumia 1020 users: please update to Windows Phone 8.1)
  • Behavior of the 'reset' button in the filter editor changed, it now generates random filters. Have fun!
  • Added a second black and white mode
  • Added keyboard input for the RGB sliders in the filter editor
  • Added shorter intervals to timelapse (performance depends on phone, resolution, and shutter speed. Faster values may not work on all devices)
  • Added support for Prestigio, Blu Win, and Micromax phones (reinstall might be needed).
  • Added Spanish and Turkish languages
  • UI / UX improvements
  • Optimizations to filter processing, install size 40% smaller
  • By popular demand, added a donation page. If you downloaded ProShot for free and are enjoying it, please consider donating, it helps us make a better app. Thank you :)
  • Bug fixes to rotation lock, timelapse, and filter editor
  • Updated online manual, www.riseupgames.com/proshot/manual/windowsphone
  • Lumia 1020 users: reset your camera every once in a while by going to settings->applications->photos+camera->reset camera, and then restart your phone. We've noticed that it can speed up camera loading considerably.

There are a number of other optimizations and improvements in version 5.5. Additionally, ProShot now supports phones from Prestigio, BLU, and Micromax.

QR: proshot

Joseph Keller
Joseph Keller
69 Comments
  • Seems faster
  • Seems same to me...
  • Better question would be how's the heat problem?
  • The heat issue is like this: Through general usage, you won't see it at all. What causes it are typically spending a lot of time manipulating sliders in the filter editor. ProShot generally only needs one thread to run (the background thread), but updating sliders requires the UI thread to run. When both threads are running, Silverlight / WP OS upclocks the CPU to its max speed and turns both cores on. I have done all that I can to mitigate this, and like I said, you generally won't experience heat during typical usage. If you've ever played Microsoft Solitare for more than 3 minutes, you know how much it will heat up your device, and that's a very simple app. It all comes down to how the CPU is utilized. Hope that explanation helps!  
  • How substantially faster is it ?
  • At least 0.8s faster on a Lumia 520 by my calculation (comparing dev build 5.2.0.3 vs 5.5). When apps get certified and put on the store, they get an extra bit of optimization, so I'm not sure of the final number. Edit: To optimize ProShot, I removed dependencies on third party libraries and wrote my own purpose-built code. This optimzing cut the download size by almost 25%, cut the install size by almost 40%, and made a big difference in loading speed on all devices, but especially on those like the 520. There may still be a bit more room to cut down, but the bottleneck is now Silverlight itself.   
  • So you're the developer?
    Good job there bro.
  • Yep! And thank you :)
  • Ditto
  • Nice. Can't wait to try this on my Lumia 820.   Another question: Seems you pretty much nailed the experience on 512 MB devices. Can you do anything to provide a better experience or more/better features on devices with more ram ?
  • Interesting question. I'm not sure there's anything more that could be done that wouldn't work on 512MB devices. Perhaps 5-bracket HDR? (currently ProShot only does 1,2 or 3). Everything else is CPU/GPU - bound, and I optimzed the heck out of that to run on everything :P My only wish is that Silverlight would run at 60FPS without heating up devices, but that's something only Microsoft can address.
  • Good job bro.
  • Updates errday' :)
  • Every time I make ProShot faster, I have to resist a strong urge to write that in the change log :p Edit: whoops, I mean that as a response to the comment "seems faster"
  • LOL. You do terrific work. ProShot is still my goto camera app.
  • Lol I understand. Although minüte, it still does feem saster.
  • Actually, 0.8 s is huge in UI responsivness.  
  • Eddie, is there any plans to change the UI ?
  • What kind of changes are you looking for?
    The twin-dials are my babies so they're here to stay , but the right menu does need work. I'm fond of how I implemented it in the iOS version, and am looking to do something similar (yet different and cool in its own way) on WP.
  • Well, the 3D design is kinda old (IMO) so the right menu is the only thing i think need to be changed. But what do you actually mean by "twin-dials" do you mean (Camera - Drive mode) because i actually like them !  I just took a look at the IOS version, didn't see any difference, am i blind ? :O
  • Yep, that's what I mean by twin dials. Glad you like em! Cause they're not going anywhere haha. On iOS, the right menu pops in like a dialog bubble, and it's flat, as opposed to 3D in the WP version. Like this: Edit: I seem to be having some trouble embedding the gif. Here is the link: http://www.riseupgames.com/s/settings_panel.gif
  • I love this app! Amazing piece of work :)
  • This comment system is a mess. WTF is the report button set alongside the up vote arrow ????
  • I hope the crashing bug on Lumia 830 is solved
  • +830 only had it happen once though..
  • Oh no! I haven't heard of any bugs on the 830. Do you get an error report, or does it just quit? Try uninstalling, restarting your device, and then re-installing, and let me know if that doens't help. I definitely want ProShot running on that phone.
  • The app would launch but on capture it would crash with no error. I uninstalled, restarted and after install it seems to be working again. Thanks
  • Phew, glad to hear it
  • Great love this app it and Nokia pro are my fav. Keep up the great work!
  • Increased zoom is impossible and a useless function. The zoom cannot be increased more than the limits of the camerazoom itslef. This means max 4x zoom with the lumia 1020 and 3x with the lumia 1520.Anything above that means a digital zoom with high chances of pixelation and thus loss of imag resolution and quality.
  • And when Microsoft releases a 100MP camera, the 10X zoom in ProShot will be there to support it, day one :P
  • You can actually increase the zoom further on any device but that would mean decreasing the resolution of the picture. You will get more lossless zoom in a lower resolution photo than you would a high resolution photo as such.
  • can i use it for videos  + is it better than Nokia Cmera app??
  • Video will come in a future update. The problem is, the only way to add video is to update to the new 8.1 APIs. In doing so, I might have to remove filters because the 8.1 APIs removed some key functionality that I was exploiting to get fast, full HD filters at 30+ FPS. Also I invested 2 years of my life optimizing ProShot based off of the 8.0 API (and all of its quirks), so....I might have to rewrite the whole app. >_<
  • I for one love the app and would love to see a quality video option. Even if it was a separate app.
  • If you love the app and you think you did everything you could with the 8.0 APIs, then it's time to move on to WinRT 8.1 APIs? Or you can keep still improving the app using Silverling 8.1 APIs and just waiting for Windows 10's new and improved APIs?
  • Yep, the next step is to update to 8.1 APIs, which should allow me to bring quite a few fun new features along :)
  • Where is the download link?
  • Is there some technical issue that is preventing ProShot from being an option to launch from the camera button? This is literally the only thing stopping me from being my goto camera app.
  • I think that ability is open to only OEMs. I may be wrong
  • I think only OEMs :/ I've been trying to get permission from Microsoft on this for a long time https://windowsphone.uservoice.com/forums/101801-feature-suggestions/sug...
  • You're a very excellent and responsive developer, we need more people like you. Donation coming your way.
  • Thank you so much!! You don't have to, but I sincerely appreciate it. The donation page is there mainly for those who got ProShot for free to give back if they're enjoying the app. If each of those people donated just $0.99, I'd be able to offer ProShot free forever.
  • I thought I should do that.
  • I have been testing this with the normal Nokia camera and can't see much difference. I do find the pics on one shot to be brighter but a bit blurry/fuzzy compared to Nokia camera.
  • Wish there was an option to open proshot as default n from my camera button. Great job RiseupGames. This is one of the first app I paid for on Windows Store! It simply gives rest to my D90 n allows me to carry 920 around.
  • I do too, but it's a system limitation :/
  • Still don't see myself using it -no matter how great it is- unless Windows Phone opens the camera button to devs
  • Nice work dev. The only option we all want now is video recording.
  • Brilliant update. This is the best camera app out there.
  • Is there a reason on my 1520 the preview image shows up with areas of white blacked out? The photos look fine after taking pictures.
  • noticed same on 1320. disabling histogram solves the issue for me.
  • You may have enabled highlight clip (used to show areas of overexposure in your scene). You can turn it on/off from the Settings panel, the button is "Highlight Clip"
  • This is almost perfect camera app for me except RAW support. Great work! :)
  • I've been playing with ProShot a lot lately -- been liking it and finally learning how to use it. Had a 928 for a while, then just got the Icon. I finally hard reset my 928 a few weeks ago and unfortunately lost my older version of Nokia Camera (I am now on the latest version) and my Icon has Nokia Pro Cam loaded on it -- though it suffers from a glitch when reframing where your shot (both hi and lo-res) will be erased for good. So I save my reframing or any of that for after syncing to the computer. I did really appreciate the mix between simplicity and depth Nokia's app offered (along with the interface design) but they have been steadily going backwards for some time now. ProShot now fulfills my advanced shooting needs -- I have the stock Camera app load from the camera button on all 3 of my Lumia's and hit Lenses to quickly switch to whatever I need. I did have an odd experience the other night with ProShot on my 928 though -- took a few shots, and had swiped back to review one, when swiping back to shoot, it froze midway, and about 10 seconds later the whole phone restarted.  :/
  • Uh oh! Hopefully that was just a one-time thing, I've never heard of that happening before. The way Windows Phone 'sandboxes' apps means that they can't take down the OS, so the glitch must have come from the OS itself. Just a guess though.
  • Actually had that happen once with your app on my 1020. Although I've had Nokia camera app lockup my phone probably 6 times and since you can't pop a battery out of the 1020 I had to let the whole phone run down each time, not fun.
  • There should be the soft reset option for your 1020 -- it's basically just a reboot. IIRC, it's hold volume down and power for ~10 seconds or so.
  • Yeah, it certainly doesn't seem like a normal thing. Though I'll admit in all of the photography apps now, I'll make sure to back out and let them save, and make sure to sync before doing any reframing with Nokia Camera. You get to rely on these things fully and then you realize "ohhh it's a phone, right" :D
  • Haha yeah, it's funny how far we've come. 15 years ago I don't think anyone would have thought that pro photographers would be doing all of their shooting and editing on a phone.
  • Direct 20m will be wonderful.....
    Great app by the way
  • Proshot make my mobile hot..
  • Startup time is the same here.
  • It'll depend on your device, I guess I should have specified that in the changelog. For those on a L520 (~25% of all WP out there) ProShot will start about 0.8s faster, which is pretty big. On a 920 it might be 0.3-0.5s faster. And on a 930 / 1520 it probably starts up pretty darn fast already :p
  • I like that it can save just a 19MP image, whereas Nokia Camera forces 5MP+19MP - nice to save some space when your handset has no SD card slot.
  • It's a Masterpiece .... Love the app .... Keep on the hard work .... ^_*
  • Launch with camera button..
  • It'd be a great deal if you can delete photos directly from within the app :))
  • In burst mode what's the resolution? it can be changed? (using lumia 625) Great app! Regards