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Posts tagged with "Halide"

The Creativity Enabled by the iPhone 15 Pro’s New Cameras and Action Button

Every year, one of the most anticipated iPhone hardware announcements is changes to its camera. This year, the iPhone Pro Max’s new telephoto lens was the center of attention. However, there were other notable tweaks to the camera hardware and software across the iPhone lineup, too. Plus, we got a hardware bonus in the form of the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max’s Action button, which can perform some interesting tricks. Now, with the new iPhones in the hands of people around the world, we’re starting to see what that hardware can do in practice, and I’ve got three examples I’d like to share.

Source: Lux.

Source: Lux.

The first is an update to the camera app Halide that does something incredibly clever. Built into version 2.13 of the app is a shortcut that can be tied to the Action button to open Halide with a single press. That’s something you can do with any app using an Open App action, but Halide goes a step further by offering in-app functionality if you tie the button to its app. In the app’s settings, you can choose to tie the Action button to any of the following options:

  • Do nothing
  • Lenses
  • Exposure Mode
  • Focus Mode
  • RAW
  • Resolution
  • Capture

After using the Action button to open the app, pressing the button again will perform whichever action you picked in its settings. For example, if you chose Lenses, the first press of the Action button from outside the app will open Halide, and subsequent presses will cycle through each of the available camera lenses. I love this use of the Action button and hope other developers do the same, adding contextual actions to more apps.

A 5x telephoto shot by Sebastiaan de With.

A 5x telephoto shot by Sebastiaan de With.

Speaking of Halide, Sebastiaan de With, one of its creators, published a review of the iPhone 15 Pro Max camera today, concluding that:

With iPhone 15 Pro Max’s default 24 megapixel resolution, added ‘lenses’ under the main camera lens, automatic depth capture for portraits, and that 5× lens, this release might not blow away on a spec sheet, but is massive for everyone who uses an iPhone to take photos.

There’s a lot of ground to cover between the hardware and processing changes happening behind the scenes. Plus, de With is an excellent photographer whose shots do a fantastic job illustrating what is possible with the iPhone 15 Pro Max. So be sure to check out the full review.

Finally, the iPhone’s camera takes amazing video, too. This year saw the introduction of Log encoding for Pro Res 4K footage. That opens up a wider range of editing control using apps like Final Cut Pro, which Joey Helms used to create this amazing video of Chicago:

I’ve had my iPhone 15 Pro Max for just four days, and already, I’m enjoying taking photos as I walk around my neighborhood and playing with features like adding Portrait mode after the fact to images like the one below.

Before (left) and after (right) applying Portrait mode.

Before (left) and after (right) applying Portrait mode.

The result is a lot more creative freedom that’s more accessible than ever, not only because your iPhone is usually in your pocket but because the tools Apple has created for taking great photos and videos are so easy to use.

Sebastiaan de With’s iPhone 14 Pro Max Camera Review→

Photo: [Sebatiaan de With](https://lux.camera/iphone-14-pro-camera-review-a-small-step-a-huge-leap/)

Photo: Sebatiaan de With

Sebastiaan de With, part of the team behind the excellent camera app Halide, has published his annual iPhone camera review, this year putting the iPhone 14 Pro Max through its paces in and around San Francisco, Bhutan, and Tokyo. de With’s review is packed with details about every lens and Apple’s computational photography pipeline, taking readers behind the scenes in ways that Apple simply doesn’t.

Regarding the front-facing camera de With says:

In our testing, the iPhone 14 Pro achieved far sharper shots with vastly — and we mean vastly — superior dynamic range and detail.

The ultra wide camera was substantially improved too:

…with iPhone 14 Pro’s ultra-wide camera comes a much larger sensor, a new lens design and higher ISO sensitivity. While the aperture took a small step back, the larger sensor handily offsets this.

However, it’s the 48MP main lens that impressed de With the most:

While arguably, a quad-bayer sensor should not give true 48-megapixel sensor resolution as one might get from, say, a comparable ‘proper’ digital camera, the results out of the iPhone 14 Pro gave me chills. I have simply never gotten image quality like this out of a phone. There’s more here than just resolution; the way the new 48 megapixel sensor renders the image is unique and simply tremendously different than what I’ve seen before.

Overall, the advances made to Apple’s Pro-line cameras are impressive this year. With new shooting modes and changes across all of the cameras, I’m looking forward to spending more time experimenting with what the iPhone 14 can now do.

Be sure to check out the full review for de With’s stunning photography and details on the iPhone 14 Pro Max’s other lenses, as well as what’s improved and what hasn’t when it comes to Apple’s Photonic Engine processing pipeline.

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The Halide Team Compares the Camera Specs of the iPhone 14 Pro to the iPhone 13 Pro→

If you’re curious about the technical changes to the iPhone 14 Pro’s cameras, the Halide team has you covered with a side-by-side comparison between the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro. There are a lot of interesting details in the post, but it looks like the most significant changes are to the Main (formerly known as Wide) camera:

The Wide camera sees the greatest changes. The lens gets a bit wider, a 2mm focal length difference. The aperture is smaller (‘slower’), means the lens collects less light. This was probably necessary to work with a larger sensor. We calculate that the Wide camera is able to collect 20% more light compared to last year’s camera, even with this slightly worse aperture, thanks to its larger size.

We’re astonished by the improvement in the camera sensor’s ISO range. It goes far beyond previous iPhone cameras. Given high ISO values are accompanied by more noise, it’s highly likely this ISO range is made possible by how its higher resolution sensor combines 4 pixels into one, vastly reducing noise.

How these spec changes play out in practice will be interesting. We got some initial impressions in the reviews published earlier today, and Austin Mann’s review reveals some of the practical implications of the numbers cataloged by the Halide team. Still, I’m eager to see what Halide’s Sebastiaan de With and others think once they’ve had more time to push these cameras to their limits.

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Halide 2.5 Adds New Macro Mode

Halide 2.5 is out, and it includes a brand new Macro Mode. Macro photography is an exclusive feature of the iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max. Still, Halide has managed to make its Macro Mode available on the iPhone 8 and newer models thanks to some cool machine learning tricks.

Switching to Macro Mode and dialing in precise focus is simple with Halide 2.5.

Switching to Macro Mode and dialing in precise focus is simple with Halide 2.5.

Macro Mode is easy to use. When you open the app, auto-focus (AF) is selected by default. Tap it, and the focus controls slide into place with the auto-focus at one end of the app’s focus dial and Macro Mode (the button with the flower) at the other end. Select Macro Mode, and you’ll see a new focus dial with smaller increments appear. The Halide team says this enables sub-millimeter focusing for extra-precise close-up focusing.

Halide takes its close-ups by first switching to the camera on your iPhone that can take the closest shots. Focusing is handled by its precision focus dial, and the final step is to enhance the image’s details using an AI-based enhancement process. That last super-resolution step is what allows Halide’s Macro Mode to be used on cameras on older models of iPhones and to enhance Apple’s own macro system too.

In my testing over the past day, the results have been impressive. I’m especially fond of the precise focus dial that allows for minute adjustments that make a difference at such close range.

If you’re a Club MacStories+ and Club Premier member, head over to the new Photography channel in our Club Discord to see even more of my experiments with Halide’s Macro Mode and share your own macro shots.

Halide is available as on the App Store as a subscription for $2.99/month or $11.99/year or for a one-time payment of $49.99. The app also offers a 7-day free trial.

Lux Delivers an iPad Version of Halide That Addresses the Unique Challenges of iPad Photography

Students are finishing up the year here in the US, and nothing says graduation season like a relative gripping an iPad with two hands to snap photos of a graduate at a family gathering. It’s easy to poke fun at iPad photography, but those aren’t easy shots to get with Apple’s tablet. Both of your hands are occupied, and the viewfinder is huge and partially obscured by the app’s UI. If you’re at one of these events and see a relative struggling to take the perfect family portrait with their iPad, before you assume that they cut you out of the frame on purpose, show them Halide. The brand new iPad version of the app from the team at Lux makes taking iPad photos more natural and, of course, offers all the advanced features available in the iPhone version of the app.

I don’t take many photos with my iPad, and I doubt I ever will. The camera hardware isn’t as good as it is on the iPhone, and I don’t find myself in situations where I have my iPad but not my iPhone. However, once in a while, I’m using my iPad and want to capture a moment quickly without digging my iPhone out of my pocket. For those occasions, I’m going to use Halide because the app’s thoughtful design makes the experience far superior to other camera apps I’ve tried on the iPad.

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Developer Ben Sandofsky on ProRAW and Halide Mark II’s Implementation of the New Format→

ProRAW is a big deal for iPhone photography. Joining Austin Mann’s article that I linked earlier today is an even deeper dive by Ben Sandofsky, a member of the Halide Mark II team. Sandofsky does a fantastic job of contextualizing the benefits of ProRAW and explaining how it has been implemented in Halide.

Before getting into the technical details, Sandofsky walks readers through a high-level overview of the limitations of the RAW format, concluding that:

ProRAW elegantly solves all of these problems and more. You can finally reproduce the results of the first-party camera, while retaining most of the editing latitude from traditional RAWs.

What’s more, as Sandofsky explains ProRAW is an extension of the open DNG file format, which should facilitate the implementation of support for ProRAW by third-party app makers:

This may be surprising to some: ProRAW is not a proprietary or closed format. Credit where it is due: Apple deserves kudos for bringing their improvements to the DNG standard. When you shoot with ProRAW, there’s absolutely nothing locking your photos into the Apple ecosystem.

Source: Lux Optics

Source: Lux Optics

Halide Mark II, version 2.1, is available on the App Store now and supports ProRAW in a number of interesting ways:

  • Photographers can take ProRAW-only or ProRAW+JPEG images, whereas Apple’s Camera app always captures both a ProRAW and JPEG image in one shot when the ProRAW option is picked. Capturing a JPEG alongside the ProRAW image is convenient for quick sharing, but having the option to dispense with it helps reduce file size, which is a real issue with ProRAW images that are typically around 25MB.
  • The new ProRAW options are available alongside the app’s existing RAW options by long-pressing the RAW button in Halide’s image capture UI to reveal a context menu, a new feature that makes switching formats faster than repeatedly returning to settings.
  • The same context menu lets users pick between 10-bit and 12-bit color, reducing file sizes where 10-bit color depth is sufficient.
  • Unlike Apple’s Camera app, you can also turn on ProRAW, and it will stay on even if you leave Halide and return to it later, although turning it on and forgetting it’s on will fill your storage fast.

I have only just begun experimenting with Halide’s new ProRAW support, but I like the context menu for quickly changing format and color depth settings a lot. The added flexibility the app provides for which formats are captured and the color depth used are welcome, too, but it will take some time to get a better sense of which to pick in different scenarios.

ProRAW is a fascinating combination of traditional RAW and computational photography that provides hints about where Apple may be headed with its camera sensors. I highly recommend Sandofsky’s article, which is the best explanation I’ve seen of what is happening under the hood with ProRAW and what the format means for beginner and expert photographers alike.

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Sebastiaan de With Reviews the iPhone 12 Pro Max Camera→

Sebastiaan de With, Co-founder and designer at Lux (the studio behind the Halide Mark II camera app), has written a great review of the iPhone 12 Pro Max camera:

The Pro Max was the wildcard this year. Apple devoted a whole section of their keynote to it, and we got a ton of questions about it on our Twitter. Some reviewers on the internet panned it as an indistinguishable improvement from the iPhone 12 camera, while others called it quite good.

We’ll get into the iPhone 12 camera — we have a lot of thoughts on that. But the iPhone 12 Pro Max tests were quite surprising. So surprising we’ve decided to create this whole separate post about it.

De With clearly explains the impact of the Pro Max’s larger camera sensor, including detailing some scenarios in which the post-processing of Apple’s built-in Camera app can obscure the hardware’s superior results. Some excellent photographs are provided for comparison, and de With makes the point that the highest quality can be pulled from shots taken in RAW.

The whole article has an interesting viewpoint due to it coming from a team of experts on RAW photography. Make sure to give it a read and check out the photos.

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Halide Mark II Review: The Convenience of Computational Photography and Flexibility of RAW in an Elegant Camera App

iPhone photography has come a long way in the past 13 years. The original iPhone had a 2 MP camera that produced images that were 1600 x 1200 pixels. Today, the wide-angle camera on an iPhone 12 Pro has a 12 MP camera that can take shots that are 4032 x 3024 pixels.

Hardware advancements have played a big role in iPhone photography, but so has software. The size of an iPhone and physics limit hardware advances, resulting in diminishing returns year-over-year. Consequently, Apple and other mobile phone makers have turned to computational photography to bring the power of modern SoCs to bear, improving the quality of images produced by iPhones with software.

Computational photography has advanced rapidly, pushed forward by the increasingly powerful chips that power our iPhones. Every time you take a photo with your iPhone, it’s actually taking several, stitching them together, using AI to compute adjustments to make the image look better, and presenting you with a final product. The process feels instantaneous, but it’s the result of many steps that begin even before you press the shutter button.

However, the simplicity and efficiency of computational photography come with a tradeoff. That pipeline from the point you press the Camera app’s shutter button until you see the image you took involves a long series of steps. In turn, each of those steps involves a series of judgment calls and the application of someone else’s taste about how the photo should look.

Apple has made great strides in computational photography in recent years, but it also means someone else's taste is being applied to your images. Source: Apple.

Apple has made great strides in computational photography in recent years, but it also means someone else’s taste is being applied to your images. Source: Apple.

In many circumstances, the editorial choices made by the Camera app result in great photos, but not always, and the trouble is, your ability to tweak the images you take in compressed file formats is limited. A more flexible alternative is to shoot in a RAW file format that preserves more data, allowing for a greater range in editing options, but often, the friction of editing RAW images isn’t worth it. The Camera app is good enough most of the time, so we tolerate the shots that don’t look great.

However, what if you could have the best of both worlds? What if you could capture a lightweight, automatically-adjusted photo and an editing-friendly RAW image at the same time, allowing you to pick the right one for each image you take? If you like the JPEG or HEIC image produced by Apple’s computational photography workflow, you could keep it, but you could always fall back to the RAW version if you want more editing latitude. That way, you could rely on the editorial choices baked into iOS where you like the results but retain control for those times when you don’t like them.

That’s what Halide Mark II by Lux sets out to accomplish. Halide is a MacStories favorite that we’ve covered many times in the past, but Mark II is something special. The latest update is an ambitious reimagining of what was already a premier camera app, building on what came before but with a simpler and easier to learn UI. Halide Mark II puts more control than ever into the hands of photographers, while also making it easy to achieve beautiful results with minimal effort. Halide also seeks to educate through a combination of design and upcoming in-app photography lessons.

By and large, Halide succeeds. Photography is a notoriously jargon-heavy, complex area. It’s still possible to get bogged down, fretting over which settings are best in what circumstances. However, Halide provides the most effective bridge from point-and-shoot photography to something far more sophisticated than any camera app I’ve used. The result is a camera app that gives iPhone photographers control over the images they shoot in an app that’s a pleasure to use and encourages them to learn more and grow as a photographer.

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