Halide, the premium manual RAW camera app for iPhone, was bumped on App Store last night to version 1.2, bringing two major enhancements that help you capture better photos.
The first new feature is an even smarter Smart RAW capability and the other is a handy color histogram which makes it real easy to see when a single color channel is about to be clipped.
Smarter Smart RAW
Halide uses some clever tricks to get better RAW files out of your iPhone, a feature they’re calling Smart RAW. Thanks to machine learning, Halide 1.12’s updated Smart Raw makes more intelligent decisions around exposure to pick the best dynamic range.
For instance, the app optimizes exposure in Auto mode to improve the dynamic range and further reduce noise. “We’re incredibly excited about bringing computational photography to iPhone RAW shots,” developers noted.
Color histogram
Halide now includes a color histogram that lets you see when a single color channel is about to be clipped. If you’ve ever snapped up a muddy or washed out image in perfect lighting conditions, now you know why. Thankfully, the new Halide comes to the rescue.
Simply tap the onscreen histogram to quickly toggle between color and luminance (a histogram makes a graph of where most of the color values in your image are).
Halide’s new RGB histogram informs your image editing by giving you an at-a-glance overview of where the photograph might be losing some color data.
Armed with this knowledge, you can make relevant edits such as under-expose or over-expose the photo, increase or decrease brightness or contrast, and more—or make other edits to make your photographs appear as faithful to the real world as possible.
A new app from the makers of Halide
Last but not least, developers have teased a new upcoming app in Halide 1.2’s release notes. “If you love Halide, we’re excited to say we’re launching another app later this month,” it reads.
“This is a big deal,” they said of Halide’s new color histogram feature. “We’ll have more to share about this and this technology later this month, when we release our second app.”
This Halide update is available at no charge to existing users of the app.