Halide Mark II - by Lux Camera 4+
Pro RAW, Manual and Macro
Lux Optics Incorporated
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- Free
- Offers In-App Purchases
Screenshots
Description
**Please note: Halide is *not free*. We do offer a 7-day free trial for annual memberships. Don't like subscriptions? You can also buy the app outright with a single in-app purchase.**
Halide is the Apple Design Award winning camera app with over 10,000 reviews!
The most powerful camera for iPhone with the most elegant, simple design — A pro camera for everyone.
Perfect for deliberate and thoughtful photography - for beginners and experts alike. Get started with our included 10 days of photography lessons to get up to speed, or enjoy Macro photography on any iPhone with our Neural Macro feature. With high-end tools, and a beautiful interface designed from scratch for the latest iPhones and inspired by the controls of professional cameras, Halide is your go-to camera when you want to really take a photo rather than a quick snapshot.
Use gestures in Halide to change exposure and manual focus with a swipe, or switch from its powerful automatic mode to manual shooting.
Halide’s professional tools are the most powerful in the App Store, with XDR (Extended Dynamic Range) 14-bit RAW streaming waveform views, color zebras, focus assists like focus peaking and loupe, histograms, an adaptive level grid, and manual depth capture. Customize controls to adapt the app to your needs.
Halide’s control is unmatched. Shoot without any of Apple’s image processing with our minimal, film-like Process Zero — or use Apple Processing for HEIC / JPG shots and ProRAW. Our ProRAW support* is unmatched. Strike the right balance between file size and editing latitude by choosing between 12-bit and 10-bit ProRAW and megapixel options. Effortlessly switch to native RAW, for greater detail and speed.
Features:
- Beautiful, intuitive gesture-based interface, usable with one hand
- Become a better photographer by signing up for comprehensive lessons like a 10-day quick tutorial right from the app.
- Get macro shots on any iPhone, even without a macro lens with Neural Macro
- Take portraits of pets and objects on single-camera phones, like iPhone XR and iPhone SE
- Take control of processing! Skip Apple’s image processing altogether with Process Zero, or quicky tap our format picker to choose the right processing for your shot.
- Lock screen widgets and home screen widgets for quick shooting
- Manual focus, and powerful tools like a Focus Loupe and Focus Peaking
- Edit Process Zero shots in the app with our powerful Image Lab slider
- Full manual exposure controls including shutter speed, ISO and white balance
- Best-on-iPhone exposure tools: histograms, XDR 14-bit RGB waveform, and color zebra stripes
- Captures ProRAW, RAW, HEIC or JPG for the best quality shots
- Grid overlay with built-in level
- A powerful reviewer to view DNG, JPG, HEIC and Live Photos, as well as Portrait depth data and mattes, with a detailed metadata view - with batch export!
- Technical Readout to view all details of your iPhone camera hardware
- All in: Halide comes with an iPad app and Apple Watch companion app for remote shooting
- Siri Shortcuts support to trigger the shutter remotely, or open Halide in Auto or Manual mode
- Private by Design: Halide does not include any trackers or tracking, has not third party libraries, does not collect data or photos, and never transmits any information. Halide also includes features to reduce spying by companies like Facebook by limiting location information on photos shared from the app.
- Feature limitations:
*ProRAW requires iPhone 12 Pro or Pro Max or newer
The Ultra Wide and selfie cameras do not support RAW or manual focus unless on iOS 15.
Waveform requires iPhone 8 or newer
Depth Capture requires iPhone 7 Plus or newer
Terms of Use can be found here: [https://halide.cam/terms](https://halide.cam/terms)
Privacy: [https://halide.cam/privacy](https://halide.cam/privacy)
What’s New
Version 2.15.1
Halide 2.15 is here: something we’ve worked on for a very long time.
Introducing: Process Zero, the Image Lab, and the ultimate level of control over camera processing on iPhone.
PROCESSING
When you take a photo on your iPhone, your photo is processed. The newer your iPhone is, the more processing typically happens: sometimes AI even comes in to make significant changes to your shot. People are made brighter, noise is reduced, details enhanced and ‘flaws’ removed.
You might love this, or you might not. That can even change for photo to photo. That made us think: why shouldn’t you be able to choose your processing the way you choose a lens?
Where Halide previously allowed you to reduce processing, Halide 2.15 gives you total control: we now let you choose your image processing from the go. When you first set up Halide, or when you tap the format picker in the app, we now offer a choice:
Apple’s standard image processing, reduced image processing, or something new: Process Zero.
PROCESS ZERO
Process Zero is our own process. We take raw sensor data, and do minimal processing to make a beautiful, natural and film-like shot. It’s very quick (up to 20 times faster than ProRAW) it is saved along with a 12 megapixel native RAW file. You can choose it at any time by tapping the “RAW” / “HEIC” format picker icon in the Halide interface, or you can read more and select a process in the Capture settings.
After taking a few shots, using it is simple: on your iPhone, any app you open your photos in will use the Process Zero image, and any editor that supports RAW will open the RAW data for further editing. Easy!
After many releases focusing on the latest and greatest iPhones, we are proud to say that we’ve worked hard to customize and optimize Process Zero for all iPhones we support. Those that do not have ProRAW on their iPhones will benefit from better processing on their RAW shots right away, as well as the Image Lab.
Note: Process Zero is not made for low light photography, as it will get noisy and can get color cast. It has no HDR or AI to tweak its detail or dynamic range. Use this if you want to shoot entirely without Apple’s processing — a bit like an older digital camera, for natural looking shots, or as a starting point for editing.
IMAGE LAB
When we shot with Process Zero, we found we often didn’t want to edit the results much, but we did want to tweak exposure at times. Since all Process Zero shots contain the original RAW data, we decided to add our first editing feature: the Image Lab.
In the reveiwer, tap the small +/- icon to open the Image Lab. Adjusting exposure here will re-process the raw data with Process Zero, letting you often recover lost detail in shadows or highlights. Saving it will keep your RAW intact and save a new Process Zero shot.
Easy, quick adjustments, ideal when you want to skip the editing or get a first pass on your shots.
MORE
There’s tweaks and fixes all over, and some new secret additions to those that enjoy customizing Halide. This is our first large release since we released Kino just weeks ago, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to work hard on bringing you yet another big update for Halide users.
Most importantly: we’d love to see your shots with Process Zero! Tag us on social media with your captures — we’d love to see them.
Ratings and Reviews
Editors’ Choice
Your iPhone and iPad have excellent cameras and the picture wizards at Lux Optics want to help photographers make the most of it with Halide Mark II. This camera app is designed around two principles: the kind of granular settings you’d expect from a professional DSLR, and a slick, one-handed interface that complements today’s devices.
/respect
Okay, realistically, I’ll probably never use this app. I’m one of those old skool types who needs to see the world through a viewfinder. No screens will suffice (except for post prod). HOWEVER - these guys do it right, IMHO. They tell you right up front that Halide ain’t free, but give you a reasonable subscription cost and a week to see if it’s worth it. Hate subscriptions? (I do) Okay, you can buy it outright (though it IS a bit expensive to do so). Better yet - no data scavenging. Funny how so many people think everything should be free for them. Free healthcare, free education, free music, free movies, free apps. Folks, ain’t NOTHIN free. Somebody, somewhere is paying for it all, and eventually the tab will make its way back around to you in some fashion. Devs need to buy groceries too. When you find one that’s up front about it, offers a quality product and doesn’t try to soak you a week’s pay for it (oh, that’s right… you probably work for free too. My bad.) maybe crack your wallet open just a bit and show them some love.
Good Interface but Buggy
I am on Halide’s trial. I love the interface. I really think that the interface AND the macro mode are the biggest strengths of this app (I’m on an iPhone 14 Pro). I love being able to change formats, choose raw + jpeg right there on the main screen, and I also love to adjust exposure compensation with a swipe up or down. Unfortunately whenever ProRaw is used there’s a bigger delay than what we get on the native iPhone camera. It doesn’t matter if it’s 12 MP or 48 MP, the native camera allows you to shoot back-to-back shots faster, and that’s important for me (as I do a lot of street or documentary photography). Also. The volume up button is supposed to work as shutter release, but it’s buggy and sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. I’ve found auto-focus to be also a problem. It doesn’t auto-recognize faces as the native camera does and will often focus on objects that are closer instead. When in manual mode the controls are a bit confusing, it’s hard to change speed only without messing with ISO… I wish there was a shutter priority mode. Oh… and manual mode doesn’t work on 48 MP captures. I honestly would not mind paying for the subscription if what I mentioned here is fixed - the autofocus problems, the delay between proraw shots, the volume up shutter, a more intuitive manual mode or shutter priority mode. As it is now I think I’ll continue using the native camera.
Developer Response ,
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App Privacy
The developer, Lux Optics Incorporated, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.
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Information
- Seller
- Lux Optics Incorporated
- Size
- 26.7 MB
- Category
- Photo & Video
- Compatibility
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- iPhone
- Requires iOS 16.0 or later.
- iPad
- Requires iPadOS 16.0 or later.
- Apple Watch
- Requires watchOS 4.0 or later.
- Languages
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English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese
- Age Rating
- 4+
- Copyright
- © 2024 Lux Optics Inc
- Price
- Free
- In-App Purchases
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- Yearly $11.99
- Monthly $2.99
- One Time Purchase $59.99
Supports
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Family Sharing
Some in‑app purchases, including subscriptions, may be shareable with your family group when Family Sharing is enabled.