I've been running the Riverside Expressway Traffic Cam for some time now. One of the things that's been bothering me with it has been the image quality of night time shots. I've had a look around different apps that I could use for this purpose and it really came down to Webcam Tools (macaw) and ImageSnap. I looked at other tools and these either didn't work at all or were not compatible with OS X Lion Server.

Here's what I found. ImageSnap was definitely much better for night time shots, it also seemed to capture a wider angle image than wacaw. The wacaw image is on the left, ImageSnap image is on the right.




ImageSnap seems to produce a brighter image, however the image is slightly washed out. I've still not worked out what those green lines are, I'm guessing it's just glare from the windows.

Even though the night time image was better, I wanted to see what both of these apps will do for day time shots. Here's what I got. The wacaw image is on the left, ImageSnap image is on the right.


Again, the ImageSnap picture is better, but washed out.

I think with some additional filters (via ImageMagic), I can clear up the ImageSnap picture, that's an exercise for another time. As of now, the traffic cam script is using ImageSnap instead of wacaw.

-i