Halide 2.15: Process Zero
Ben Sandofsky (Mastodon, MacRumors, tweet, Reddit):
Today, we are launching something unlike any tech product in 2024: a product that uses zero AI and zero computational photography to produce natural, film-like photos. We call it Process Zero. It lives in Halide, and it turns your iPhone into a classic camera.
Process Zero is a new mode in Halide that skips over the standard iPhone image processing system. It produces photos with more detail and allows the photographer greater control over lighting and exposure. This is not a photo filter— it really develops photos at the raw, sensor-data level.
[…]
Because Process Zero does not fuse multiple shots, you are limited by the dynamic range of the sensor.
However, you can get sharper (albeit noisier) photos that don’t have the smooth, glowing, over-processed look.
Previously:
- The Limits of Computational Photography
- iPhone Camera Over Processing
- iPhone Cameras and Computational Photography
- Halide 2.5: Macro Mode
- ProRAW
- Upgrading From an iPhone SE to an XR
- iPhone XS Users Complain About Skin-Smoothing Selfie Camera
- The Power of RAW on iPhone
Update (2024-08-17): Ben Sandofsky:
We launched with support for RAW capture, no developing. The results looked awful, but useful for camera nerds.
We tried to fix this in 2020 with a button to auto-develop afterwards. It was an extra step, appealed to camera nerds, and results were hit or miss.
We threw that out and started over. This is just… our processing. An alternative to Apple’s.
See also: Hacker News.
Update (2024-09-13): Filipe Espósito:
A Process Zero photo is based on the RAW image captured from the sensor. Halide saves both RAW data and a JPG or HEIC image that can be easily shared with anyone. One downside is that third-party apps can only take RAW images at 12 megapixels on the iPhone, so there’s no way to capture 24 or 48 megapixel Process Zero images.
[…]
Naturally, since Process Zero images don’t take advantage of Night Mode, the pictures will look noisier. Halide suggests that users take pictures with manual controls to reduce the ISO for better results. Also, since Process Zero images don’t have HDR, you need to make sure which object in the scene you want to adjust the exposure accordingly.
See also: Lux.
I want to use Halide’s Process Zero a lot more - perhaps all the time? But it only shoots raw and I’d prefer JPG for most things mostly due to size.
After trying out Process Zero for a while, I don’t think it’s really for me, though I will continue to use it for select shots where it’s really important to have lots of editing options. The two main issues:
Most of the time, I have no preference or prefer the non–Process Zero photo. For my purposes, it’s not worth the storage and trouble of creating multiple versions of each photo (one of them RAW) to see which I prefer. With older iPhones and iOS versions, I liked using Keep Normal Photo so I could easily have both HDR and non-HDR versions of each image, as often one was much better than the other, and the storage penalty wasn’t huge. But Apple has removed that option—and no longer even lets me turn off HDR. Halide does have an option for using Apple Processed without Smartest Image Processing, but this needs to be chosen in the settings; it doesn’t automatically save multiple versions of each photo.
Using Halide alongside the regular Camera app doesn’t seem to play well with iOS multitasking. As soon as I started doing this on hikes, my Gaia GPS tracks started getting holes in them where it would stop recording for a while.
9 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
@Léo Shooting a raw image how? My understanding is the Apple Camera app only offers ProRAW, which uses their full processing. Halide previously offered RAW with no processing. Process Zero is Halide’s own minimal processing that is intended to look like film.
Damn, I didn't realize this was even possible, but this is super, super cool. And the pictures they show are absolutely beautiful.
@Michael ProRAW is a relatively new thing in iOS. Halide has offered a RAW setting since 2017. It wasn’t very useful back then because the sensors were terrible, but it was there, and it was “zero” “AI" processing.
Here is a blog post from 2017, describing RAW:
https://www.lux.camera/the-power-of-raw-on-iphone-part-1-shooting-raw/
Here is a twitter thread where the designer of the app raving how “amazing” RAW images “can” look:
https://x.com/sdw/status/928399492105224192
Then, when Apple launched ProRAW support in 2020, here is the blog post explaining the difference between RAW and ProRAW:
https://www.lux.camera/understanding-proraw/
Now, in 2024, lo and behold, we have "Process Zero”, a shiny new name for RAW photography that has been offered in the same app since 2017. I guess that’s what you have to do when you have a ridiculous subscription model. And since they are an Apple darling, this type of nonsense marketing has found its way everywhere.
@Plume Never fall for marketing shots. Never. Even if taken with a real iOS device, and I am not saying they aren’t, the one that took them is a professional photographer who has meticulously framed and lit the scene.
@Léo I have links to their previous RAW discussions above. I think the RAW file is the same as with previous versions. The difference is that Process Zero is a new way of developing/minimally processing the RAW to produce a JPEG/HEIC that you can actually use. I would be good to see a comparison of their old processing vs. the new processing instead of just their new vs. Apple’s.
"Even if taken with a real iOS device, and I am not saying they aren’t, the one that took them is a professional photographer"
I was mainly referring to the additional detail that's visible in the unprocessed shots compared to the processed ones, e.g. the wrinkles on the skin and the hair on the baby that are all smoothed out in the processed image, not necessarily about the composition. Obviously, switching off the processing has no effect on how the images are composed.
But yes, I'm assuming that these are actually genuine comparisons.
@Michael From the Reddit you linked:
> The tricky thing? We can’t offer no processing. RAW files with true raw sensor data (not proraw) - which we shoot on all iPhones, not just pro ones - need to be ‘edited’ and processed in some way to become a usable shot.
So it’s exactly like the old RAW feature. Every RAW data requires some processing. All the drawbacks I can find with this “Zero” option are the same ones that were true in 2017 due to tiny sensors.
@Léo What is it that you want? The raw data is the raw data. Why should that be different? AFAIK, the point of the Zero feature is to develop a HEIC file from the RAW, and this works differently from the old feature.
While I agree that the marketing around this makes it sound like the whole thing is new, which isn’t quite true, the processing around it *is* new and improved. I was never impressed by the old one-touch processing they had, which did have a kinda flashy marketing name. This one is equally flashy sounding, but the results are certainly improved.
I don’t think it’s fair to complain about the pictures they shared as being meticulously framed or lit- I’ve gotten similar photos with the iPhone cameras over the years. The whole point of the tool is to enable people to create better pictures. If they were posting photos from other cameras, that’d be worth complaining about.
