Professional Camera App Halide Mark II Launches With a New Design and More

The completely new app features a redesigned interface that is made to use with one hand. You can use simple gestures to change the exposure and manual focus or change the automatic mode to manual shooting.

To help new photographers, when tapping to toggle any of the icons in the focus dial, you’ll see a brief description of the action.

Speaking of newcomers, Halide Mark II will help you learn more about the app and photography concepts with a simple 10-day course.

Experienced users can also embark on the course to help learn something new. Developer Lux is promising to add more lessons and content in the future.

For anyone who likes to capture images in RAW format, the app uses the new Coverage feature to store both a classic RAW and a computational photo.

Another great feature is Instant RAW. Lux explains more about how that works in a blog post:

Instant RAW develops your RAW file in one tap. Just like how Smart RAW helps Halide expose RAW correctly using Machine Learning, with Instant RAW Halide goes through a 17-step process of intelligently developing your file to get the best possible result. It’s optimized differently for different iPhones; it enhances detail and color; and above all, it’s neutral.

iPhone photos are increasingly intelligently processed: they are a result of many photos, merged, intelligently combined, enhanced and massaged. A RAW capture is a single shot. It makes for a very different look —and yes, it has grain, just like a film photo — but we think it’s beautiful.

Other notable new features include XDR Analysis that visualize 14-bit RAW data, revamped luminance and color histograms, and much more.

You can read more about all of the changes here.

Hallide Mark II is available for the iPhone and can be downloaded now on the App Store for free.

You’ll need a subscription to use the app that is currently $9.99 per year. That will soon be raised to $11.99 in the near future.

Anyone who purchased the original Halide will receive a year-long subscription for free.

Alternatively, you can pay $30 for the lifetime use of the app. That will soon rise to $36.