Halide 2.15: Process Zero

Is this any different than just taking a raw image?

@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.