New 'Halide Mark II' Pro Camera App Released for iPhone

Lux Optics has released a new 'Halide Mark II' pro camera app for the iPhone, redesigning their already great Halide camera app and introducing over 50 new features. We've included the release notes for the new app below; however, you should really check out the full announcement for all the details.

This is a groundbreaking app for deliberate and thoughtful photography. 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, manual depth capture, and RAW support.* Customize controls to adapt the app to your needs.

Features:
● Beautiful, intuitive gesture-based interface, usable with one hand
● Take portraits of pets and objects on iPhone XR and iPhone SE
● Manual focus, and powerful tools like a Focus Loupe and Focus Peaking
● Smart automatic mode with Halide Smart RAW, optimizing settings with Machine Learning for RAW files with less noise and more detail
● 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 RAW, TIFF, 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
● Instant RAW development process to quickly develop your RAW files in a tap
● Technical Readout to view all details of your iPhone camera hardware
● Apple Watch companion app for remote shooting
● Siri Shortcuts support to trigger the shutter remotely, or open Halide in Auto or Manual mode
● Coverage, a powerful new feature to take two photos with a small delay to capture both a maximum-Smart HDR processed image with Deep Fusion and Smart HDR, as well as a DNG RAW.
● Become a better photographer by signing up for comprehensive lessons like a 10-day quick tutorial right from the app.
● 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:
● The Ultra Wide camera on iPhone 11 and 11 Pro does not support RAW or manual focus.
● Waveform requires iPhone 8 or later. (8, X, XS, XR, SE2, 11, 11 Pro)
● Depth Capture requires iPhone 7 Plus, 8 Plus, X, XS, XR, 11, 11 Pro, or SE2

What's New In This Version:
After 18 months of work, today we're excited to launch Halide Mark II — Not just Halide's biggest update yet, but a whole new app.

If you already bought Halide 1, we have great news: you're getting Mark II for free!

We have a lot to talk about and limited space in release notes, so for the full details check out our announcement at blog.halide.cam

A LEAP FORWARD IN DESIGN
Halide has been completely redesigned. We've taken years of lessons and advancements from Halide to inform its new design. Our new interface is simplified, yet more powerful — thanks to new gestures and thoughtful details throughout. It is even more polished than before. Of course, everything is still in easy reach with one hand — even on phones with a home button: iPhone SE users rejoice!

COVERAGE AND INSTANT RAW
Everyone wants to shoot RAW. It's powerful — but where do you start?

When you take a photo with the built-in camera app, it makes a ton of decisions on your behalf. That's great for most, but your involvement in development is part of the artistic process, similar to how photographers would choose a specific film stock and processing to achieve a specific look.

Aspiring photographers learning to process RAW face three big challenges. 1) Unprocessed images start out looking worse than you expect, 2) the iPhone cannot perform advanced computational photography, such as Smart HDR and Deep Fusion, while capturing RAW, and 3) Many popular photo filter apps don't support RAW.

All these problems leave aspiring photographers thinking: "Do I want to take a photo that's ready to share, or jump through all these hoops for maximum power when editing?" 

Until today.

Introducing two new features: Halide Mark II is the first camera to capture both RAW and computational photos in one burst, in a feature we call COVERAGE. Now you can take amazing photos that leverage all the advanced photography of the latest iPhones, while having a RAW in your back pocket in case you think you can do better.

We're making it easier to edit a RAW with a feature we call INSTANT RAW. Think of as midway between a completely unedited RAW, and a totally processed JPEG. It's really meant for editing, but sometimes you'll be amazed by the results. It's one tap in our brand new reviewer.

PRO TOOLS XDR
Mark II bursts with new tools to help with focus and exposure. First we revamped our existing Luminance and Color histograms. You can now keep them tiny and out of the way if you want your full attention on your photo, or enlarge them to obsess over fine details.

But our groundbreaking change is the addition of a third type of visualization, the Waveform. Up to now, this powerful tool was only used in high-end motion picture work, and we're the first app to bring it to photography. In short, this tool horizontally scans over your image to expose which color channels are clipped.

You may be familiar with Zebra Stripes, stripes appear when parts of your images are clipped. However, we've advanced the concept of Zebras to include details on which individual channels are clipped. We call them Color Zebras.

These are the most advanced tools for an iPhone camera yet: All of these features use something we call Extended Dynamic Range (XDR). We are the the first camera app to provide full, 14-bit RAW data powered exposure tools in realtime.

INTRODUCING: MEMBERSHIP
As a Halide owner, you own all of its core features. It is not going away. However, we are offering a separate, *completely optional* membership so we can offer services with ongoing cost, and premium, ongoing content. Subscribe today for an exclusive new icon.

THANK YOU
Halide is made by a small team of three. It wouldn't be possible to ship a massive project like this without support from folks like you, a person who cares enough to read to the bottom of crazy long release notes. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for your support! If you love it, leave us a review!

— Ben, Sebastiaan, & Rebecca

You can download Halide Mark II from the App Store for free.

Read More