Smart Shoot by Nokia: Helping you put the best face forward

Smart Shoot is a Windows Phone 8 photography app, exclusive to the Nokia Lumia phones such as the Lumia 920. Smart Shoot is a stand alone app much like the smart group shot feature in Nokia's Camera Extras for Windows Phone 7.5 and is designed to help you take better people or group pictures by correcting those distracting facial expressions.
Ever take a picture of your friends and someone has their eyes closed or they are looking away? If you catch it, you can always re-shoot the picture but then everyone gets impatient and they threaten to revolt. If you miss it, then you're stuck with a bad photo. Smart Shoot is designed to avoid these type situations.
Once you have your friends lined up just right, hit the shutter button or tap the screen and Smart Shoot will take five pictures about a second apart (you'll need to keep the camera steady). You can then swipe up or down on the screen to find the best of the five to save or if you need to swap faces around to get everyone looking in the right direction, smiling and with their eyes open there's an option to change the faces around.
Once you find the best photo of the bunch, to change the faces just choose the edit faces option from the edit menu button (on the right side of the screen). The edit faces option circles all the faces in the picture and from there, tap on the face you want to change and you can then tap to scroll through the other faces (from the other images) and pick the best expression. When done, tap the check button and your image is saved.
There's also an editing option with Smart Shoot that will let you delete objects from the photo. Just tap the edit button and choose Erase Objects. Smart Shoot will then identify objects that are distracting and erase/clone them out of the picture. Once you get things just right, tap the save button and your Smart Shoot photo is saved to your Windows Phone Pictures Hub.
Your saved image can be shared from Smart Shoot but you'll need to go to the Pictures Hub to upload the final image to your SkyDrive account.
Oh... speaking of the Pictures Hub... if you pull up the saved image taken with Smart Shoot and tap the three dot menu, you can re-open the image and the alternative shots in Smart Shoot. This is a handy feature to have just in case you change your mind on any of the edits you performed the first go around.
As far as helping you combat those who shut their eyes, look the other way or get caught picking their nose, Smart Shoot does a nice job of things. As far as erasing objects, I really didn't have much success with that option (your results may differ). I would have liked to have had the ability to highlight the areas needed to be cloned out instead of having these areas selected automatically. Either that or a help section to better explain the process.
No complaints as far as image quality is concern and overall Smart Shoot is a nice photographic tool for your Nokia Lumia Windows Phones. Smart Shoot is a free app that you can find in the Nokia Collection in your Marketplace app or you can follow this link (opens in new tab) (or scan the QR code below) from your Lumia Windows Phone 8 device.
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George is the Reviews Editor at Windows Central, concentrating on Windows 10 PC and Mobile apps. He's been a supporter of the platform since the days of Windows CE and uses his current Windows 10 Mobile phone daily to keep up with life and enjoy a game during down time.
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George, does the image saved from SmartShoot (after all the editing) keep the full 8MP resolution of the first picture taken?
Or does the app downscale the photo to a lower resolution to "cover" the small glitches that mayn occur when changing faces/erasing areas?
Thanks, great article :) -
It keeps things at full resolution but shoots at the 16:9 aspect ratio.
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Ok, so I guess that the photos will be at 7MP, instead of 8 (due to the aspect ratio of the picture inside the sensor).
Anyway, that's not a problem, this app is awesome.
Thanks for your answer :) -
How is this different from Smart Group Shot?
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As best I can tell it's just a stand alone app. It would be nice if Nokia would toss this, a panorama, and a burst feature into the camera's native settings like they did with the Lumia 900 via Camera Extras.
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I would imagine there is no need to toss it into the camera's native settings since lenses can be access from the main camera just as easily as through settings.
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I've had issues with it erasing images from the picture, sometimes it won't catch things. I've not had many times I've needed it but it some times doesn't work when I need it. But again like I said, I rarely use it to begin with
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One of the best apps
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Just got my 920 today :D cant wait to try these Nokia apps out!
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Happy 920'ing .
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Isn't the Erase Objects option meant to help you remove objects that move through your scene? In other words, use the portion from one of the images where the object to be removed doesn't exist in that particular shot?
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Yes, it is. As far as I know it will only detect and let you remove moving "objects". It's not like the "content-aware" feature in photoshop, instead I believe the algorithm detects what moves and combine the several pictures so that the object is not shown.
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I did a blog post on this. Http://Slickrickistheman.wordpress.com
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I think the smart-shoot is awesome but I think the feature takes a bit too long to finish taking all the pictures. Whenever I use this to take pictures of friends or family they get a bit frustrated and ask whether I have taken the shot or not. They should have put a dedicated camera chip (like the 8X) in order to make this feature really useful.
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Try Turbo Camera for this :)
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Does turbo camera allow me to use the face changing feature of the smartshoot lens?
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I just used this to take a group shot with 4 very picky people and then I let them pick their own faces! :) Also, I tell people ahead of time that it will take a few seconds for the picture to take.
I think the erase objects is for things that go into the picture and aren't in all 5 shots, if I'm not mistaken. If you have a tree in all of the sample shots, it's not going to be able to get rid of it. If a car passes by in the shot that you think is otherwise best it can sample out the car using data from the other shots in the set. That is my understanding, anyway.
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Yep, that's my understanding of the erase function...it's to remove moving objects . It's awesome when you're trying to photograph something and people and or traffic get in the way. Works amazingly well at magically erasing the interlopers.
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Double post. Sorry!
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I think this would be way more effective if the camera could take pictures faster. For instance, on the iPhone 5, you can take pictures as fast as you can tap the screen for as many times as you want. Now, imagine if you paired that with this app technology! Then you could choose how many pictures in a row it takes: 5, 10, 20, or even more. That would be great for moving subjects, or trying to catch a pic of lightning.
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After getting black update i can't download smart shoot in my Lumia 720 is anybody get it ???
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Can't download it after black update!!!!!!
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I am unable to install the app in Lumia 920