**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)
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Summary of user reviews
Positive highlights
🔍
This app hasExcellent manual controls and customization options
🔧
This app hasIntuitive and clean user interface
📸
This app hasProduces high-quality RAW and JPEG images
🔍
This app hasPowerful macro mode with precise focus control
🎨
This app hasPreserves natural colors and textures better than native camera app
🔍
This app hasUseful features like focus peaking, exposure compensation, and manual white balance
🤝
This app hasGreat customer service and responsive developers
🔍
This app hasIntegrates well with Adobe Lightroom workflow
🔍
This app hasOffers a free trial before committing to purchase
Negative highlights
🔍
This app hasOccasional bugs and crashes, especially on newer iPhone models
🔍
This app hasSlow processing of RAW files compared to native camera app
🔍
This app hasLack of a true shutter priority mode or semi-manual mode
🔍
This app hasNo live preview of depth effect in the app, have to rely on post-processing
🔍
This app hasExpensive subscription model compared to one-time purchase
🔍
This app hasZoom controls are clunky and limited
🔍
This app hasNo video recording functionality
🔍
This app hasConfusing manual controls for some users, could use better onboarding
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This app hasCompatibility issues with older iPhone models for certain features
What's New in Halide Mark II
2.17.8
December 23, 2024
This small patch fixes an issue on the iPhone 16, where the interface might be oriented incorrectly when starting the app using camera controls from landscape orientation.
I was having difficulty with the manual settings. ISO and shutter speed weren't recording properly -- shots would come out with different values than the settings. It was my misunderstanding of the file formats that was the cause. Now that I'm shooting in the full "Process Zero" RAW, I'm getting great photos with the correct ISO and shutter speed. What a difference! I've tried other photo apps, but I like Halide's layout and controls. (Maybe one little feature request would be to have tactile response "sticking" to some common film speed values, like 100, 400, 800, etc.) One small challenge is that there is no way for the preview to truly capture what will be recorded. I understand that it's impossible to circumvent the underlying iOS image processing. But, hey, I still remember the days of film when you got what you got a week or two later…
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Response from developer
We're sorry to hear you're running into trouble. If you reach out to support@lux.camera we'll dive right into what could be happening.