Halide Mark II
halide.cam
halide.cam
Edit: An observation I’ve had is that third party camera apps on iOS have a niche audience because they cannot be the default app. If you swipe left on the Lock Screen or tap on the camera icon on the Lock Screen, only Apple’s stock camera will open. I hope Apple adds more app types to have defaults set to third party apps. I know Apple cares about camera launch time and how quickly photos can be taken. There could be a minimum performance threshold set for that. It’s high time!
I have several high quality photo apps I prefer, and almost always end up using the default one because its easier to access.
That said, we wish the App Store offered a better solution than what we had to settle with; we'd much rather people know up-front the business model than download the app, be surprised, and possibly leave a negative review.
As far as replacing the first party camera, it's by far our top user request. Some users have come up with interesting hacks via shortcuts or the back-tap gesture, but we'd much rather the user be able to customize it similar to how iOS now lets you set a different default browser. Hopefully someday!
> “You download the app and it doesn’t work, that’s not what we want on the store,”
https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/18/interview-apples-schiller-...
Now, he does follow with (quoting the TechCrunch article):
> This, he says, is why Apple requires in-app purchases to offer the same purchasing functionality as they would have elsewhere.
So, even though I, as a user, may consider the app to "not work" if it just asks me for a purchase immediately, Apple appears to consider an IAP prompt to be ok.
Anyways, I am an Halide v1 user so I have access to Mk II and love the app, but I'm just curious about how Apple makes these decisions.
Scummy at any rate, Apple.
I think there should be more details on what customers get with either Pay-Once (which all existing purchasers get), and/or the Membership.
If I were a new user, I would think that Pay-Once means that I'm set for life(time of the product) (seeing as how it's equivalent to slightly under 3 years of membership payments), but the comments here sound like there's a basic feature set that new users would have to pay ~$30 for at first, and newer features would be restricted to people who commit additional regular annual payments.
It's very confusing.
It is a dark pattern as far as I am concerned. Peple have invest a little more In an when they dowloaded it to their phones so it might possibly get a better conversion rate.
What is even more annoying in this pattern is that you have to fill out all sorts of data and configuration and once yo are done with all that and the app owner has collected all that nice data, you are prompted to pay and no other action is possible.
Further it hides the true cost of the app, unless you go to the app page on the app store scroll al the way down the page and click on the little arrow to see what the in app prices are.
I strongly prefer pricing up front. It is easy to understand, honest, and clear.
GP here. I was indeed surprised after downloading the app because the business model was not known (I didn't leave any reviews though). I haven't purchased the previous version and have no experience with the app.
My issue is not about your business model in that comment, but with the App Store description not saying that the application is usable only by an in-app purchase. I wouldn't even have downloaded it if that were clear. You should update the description to make it clear that the app is completely useless without buying an in-app purchase.
Also, even in the app you don't have a clear statement saying that you must purchase a subscription to use it. I spent 5 minutes thinking I was missing an "X" in the top corner or some kind of "dismiss" action that would let me use basic functionality before buying.
Just so you know, I tried to open the app for 3 minutes or so before realizing I'm getting nowhere without paying. At that point I was so pissed off I uninstalled the app thinking to myself: scam attempt.
Make it clear you have to pay to even launch your app. I don't believe this dark pattern is the way forward. It's just dirty.
I really do sympathize with the plight of indie developers on the app store but this is too much.
Fwiw, I agree, I am getting tired of the pervasiveness of subscription models, but I assume they are making good sense business wise.
A bit more expanded at http://www.eiman.tv/blog/posts/upgradepricing/index.html - haven't looked at this since 2016 though so perhaps something has changed since then.
It sounds like we get one year free?
EDIT: I have "Early supporter membership"
> All current features available forever. Free updates until Oct 22, 2021.
By my calculations, you now owe me $2.71828 and I was trying to give you money!
Subscriptions of this sort are done that way on purpose, because lots of people forget to cancel. And if you have to call a human to do the cancellation, well, that's the beauty of doing an ad campaign. Most of the people who need to cancel will try to do it at the last minute and find out that the phone lines are tied up with other people who signed up on the same couple of days they did.
Requesting a refund.
But I'm also confused about the pricing model. What is the benefit of buying the $9.99 subscription if the $29.99 purchase covers everything (or does it?), and you keep the app for more than 3 years?
We rushed out a fix as quickly as possible, and this should now be fixed. If you contact support, we'll make things right.
I may purchase again in the future.
Every other aspect of computational photography is amazing, but when shooting photos I often intend to print, the photos just look so much nicer without noise reduction in my opinion. Everything close up becomes a smudgy mess.
It sounds like an excellent app, and I wish you the best!
What I can't figure out...are the Instant RAW settings baked into the file as it is captured? Basically, if I open up a Halide RAW in Lightroom or DXO, will they be able to see the edits?
DNGs support XMP, which is an XML based way of describing edits. However, we're doing post processing that can't really be described in XMP.
We're launching Instant RAW as an MVP to see how people use it, so to that end we've only focused on "I want amazing details from RAW but I have no idea how to use Lightroom. Just let me share it on Instagram." For now.
I'm curious in what way you believe your processing pipeline for "getting to jpg" (RAW -> Instant Raw Processing -> JPEG) is superior to Apple's (capture -> Apple's Processing -> JPEG). Does it just come down to different aesthetic preferences and one-frame-per-image? Or is there something else to it?
Also, love the XDR Analysis. So cool.
"Halide’s Depth mode lets you capture Portrait mode shots of pets and people — even if Apple’s Camera app can’t. "
That feels it makes it more similar to my Samsung where I can choose what to "Live focus" on and create fake depth (although I feel Apple's people-only system allows them to recognize and transition borders better)
You also get features like a live histogram and focus peaking that can help when shooting even if you aren't going to edit it afterward.
Can't try the new version yet because of an update bug, but I like the old version a lot.
All the goodness of the first party camera's deep fusion, etc, is exposed to third-party developers. So if you're using a third party app (that knows what they're doing) then at worst you get the same results as the first party camera.
Here are some things off the top of my head that you don't get with the first party camera, excluding RAW:
Manual focus, Control over ISO vs duration, Manual white balance, Explicit control over which lens is being used (the first party camera switches without telling you), tell what parts are clipping or hitting your noise floor (histogram, waveform, and zebras), focus loupe and focus peaking that tell you exactly what is in focus (rather than tapping and hoping for the best) a reviewer lets you view the component images that make up the image asset in your library (e.g. depth data on portrait photos)…
With MKII, we're now investing in education to help beginning photographers become better.
That said, writing this out are just the checkboxes on a spreadsheet of features. It's harder to quantify the value of design. While we think the first party camera is great, it's also tasked with doing many, many things, from videos to panoramas.
Halide is designed to only shoot photos. Not even video, just photos. We're aiming to be the absolute best tool to do that one thing.
I'm not even talking about professional quality video, just "I want to record 5 seconds of my cat being cute." But I guess the reservations are partly that if you added basic video capability, people would expect it to be amazing in the same sorts of ways that it is for stills?
Funny enough, this language is actually useful for optimized image processing pipelines, especially when targeting such "uniform" devices.
(I know of which I speak. I carry around a Fuji X100F when I walk the dog.)
This app ain’t no Snapchat clone so you can give yourself cat eyes and freakishly smooth skin. It trying to suck as much data and control as possible out of the iPhone’s camera system. And for the people who are into that, they get the name.
[0] https://www.blog.google/products/pixel/pixel-visual-core-ima...
Is there an Android equivalent/similar app?
sorry to ask, but inflating downloads number this way? Can’t find a good reason...
The app looks great btw
Now I re-download Halide (the version I paid for a year or two ago) to see what this new version is all about and I'm presented with a bewildering splash screen, prompting me to subscribe (for what now?) and I do everything I can to not subscribe, and then I'm taken to the permissions screen, and it's asking for camera permissions (totally reasonable), photo library access (ok, but let's hold on for a sec), and location access (no thank you), and I can't get anywhere in the app that I paid for, without granting all three permissions.
Having location access a hard requirement for a photo app is just ridiculous. What product owner made this decision? IMO it's completely out of touch and user hostile.
Edit: turns out the hard constraint was access to the photo library. Which, how was I to know that? The UI seemed to indicate that I couldn't proceed until all the boxes were checked.
Look, I get that this is a specialized app and I understand the complexity and nuance related to app permissions. Which means the app developer has to be super clear about what the requirements are from the start.
I agree about the subscription annoyance. It tells me I have “Free updates until Oct 23 2021” but still bombarded me with “subscribe” on launch! I find this predatory.
Look, it's 2020 and tech is getting so human-hostile in so many different ways. I think it behooves us to make sure there's always a way our software can be used no matter how restrictive our users are with permissions.
Thanks for your response.
For an app that wants to save photos for the user, how do you do this permissions gating without irritating the cursory view by skeptical user?
For an app that wants to make sure you don't lose any metadata/exif (including location) how can you do that without raising eyebrows for location permissions.
How can you communicate the value prop to convert a subscription? I think the app does a great job for existing users in providing a 1yr automatic subscription (would have thought parent comment would get this) but I also am confused, and will be confused, when that time is up I think.
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Halide is a incredible application. One of my favorites. I don't use it as much as I could benefit from it because of the problem of it not having the same immediate access as the native camera app does, but also it does not include Live Photo capture which for me and moments with friends and family is essential. That said, it's the best built app I have on my phone, the best design, provides path to incredible photography results, and I will continue to pay for it.