

This is the second version of the app, Halide Mark 2, so it incorporates a range of new, innovative features as well. The standard array of expected features is, of course, to be found here – full exposure control with shutter speed and ISO, white balance controls, and on-the-fly histogram support. It offers remarkable flexibility and creative control for professional use cases, while also being familiar and accessible enough to newcomers to photography. Halide has become the standard for taking your iPhone photography to the next level. There are several apps that let you take raw photos on iPhone, but our two favorites are Halide and Moment. But what if you don't have an iPhone 12 Pro?

However, because of the large file size it may not be advisable to be your permanent camera setting, as compressed JPEG or HEIC files are often preferable for point-and-shoot photography. If you’re a budding photographer looking to take their editing skills to the next level, you should absolutely consider using raw to take photos.

Things like the tones, colors, white balance and exposure can be edited freely, with no image degradation as you edit. The result is a much larger file that can be used for much more flexible edits, giving photographers much more creative control. With a raw file, you’re capturing all of the data that gets pulled straight off of the camera sensor. However, this processing is often nigh impossible to undo due to the edits being embedded within the file. Manufacturers incorporate this processing to show off computational photography chops, and this on-the-fly processing has made taking great photos easier than ever – often no more than a point-and-shoot away. This is why each phone manufacturer’s photos tend to have a default 'look' – Apple’s tends to be quite natural, while Samsung’s tends to be quite sharp and vivid. This results in the signature 'blown out' look and the loss of detail when you try to push edits on a JPEG file too far.Īlongside this, JPEG files – particularly those from phones – will be saved as reprocessed files according to the manufacturer’s signature processing algorithm. However, these compressed images are much less flexible for editing, as the information needed to change and manipulate significant parameters of the image has mostly been removed during compression. This is useful for everyday use, as smaller photos are easier to share and take up less storage space. JPEG files are compressed image files that preserve the majority of the valuable detail in photos, while removing some of the embedded information and image data within the image file.
