In our ongoing hunt for photo apps that enhance the picture-taking abilities of your smartphone, Halide has caught our attention. Claimed as one of the smartest apps for iOS (especially, but not exclusively, the iPhone X), it offers manual focus with focus peaking, RAW+JPEG image capture, quick-swipe EV adjustment, and is an early adaptor of the new, compact HEIC image file format.
Key features include:
- Portrait Mode: Uses depth peaking and depth mapping to shoot portraits with blurred background
- Smart Auto: Halide optimizes ISO and shutter speeds, just like your iPhone default, only (they claim) better. But it can be overridden, and that’s where the fun starts.
- Quick EV: Adjust exposure with a swipe of the screen.
- Focus peaking: Halide highlights the areas of sharpest contrast in real time
- RAW+JPEG: Simultaneously capture RAW and JPEG for greater image-editing leeway
- Grid and Level: A grid overlay doubles as a level so you don’t tilt your horizons unless you want to.
- Histogram: Live histogram helps you get the right exposure.
- One-handed operation: Claims to be the only camera app for iPhone that can be easily operated with one hand.
The latest version, 1.7, adds several new features that have launched the app into the stratosphere of iOS photo apps. These include:
- Built-in Portrait Mode: Blurs the background in real time
- True Depth Camera Support
- Depth Visualizations: Lets you visualize portrait mode portraits before committing to the change
- Robust Depth Preview: They’ve revamped their photo reviewer so you can toggle the portrait focus effect on and off and even export the depth map as a PNG to use in an image editor
- AR review: Augmented reality lets you create 3D video and still images for AR users.
Halide creators Ben Sandofsky and Sebastiaan de With, are no strangers to high-end photography. Previously, Ben had worked on Periscope’s video processing stack. Sebastiaan is a part-time photographer and his motorcycle travel photography has been viewed over 5 million times on Reddit, People Magazine and other websites.
The two noticed that smartphone cameras continued to improve while the interface of camera apps remained stagnant. “Nothing matched the pleasure of using a well-built camera,” explains Sebastiaan. “Halide aims to fix that.”
Halide uses both tap- and gesture-based controls to quickly and easily change exposure and manual focus. The goal is to make them as easy to use as dials on a camera. The app defaults to an intelligent automatic mode, just like the stock iOS camera app, but tapping the “A” button in the UI turns off automatic mode and lets you get down to the nitty-gritty: you can tweak values like ISO, white balance, and shutter speed.
The addition of portrait and depth controls, however, brings Halide to an entirely new level.
Made by Chroma Noir LLC, Halide Camera costs $4.99. Download it here.
