Lux is following up a hugely successful year with new work on Halide 3.0, the latest version of its excellent iOS camera app.
Following a rather successful year, including the release of Process Zero and Kino, the iPhone App of the Year 2024, Lux is following up its annus mirabilis by working rather publicly on Halide 3.0, or, as they like to call it, Mark III.
This, it admits, is a new departure for the team. Rather than beavering away in secret, Lux plans to get users to participate in Halide 3.0’s development through a new community Discord, where people will be able to share feedback, early builds, and more. It took a similar approach to Kino, and obviously that worked out rather well for it.
So, what’s coming up? Ben Sandofsky, who along with Sebastiaan de With makes up the entire two-man team, has detailed it all in a blog post, The Road to Halide Mark III. Here’s a summary:
“The top request we've gotten is support for one-tap color grades, like what we launched this past year in Kino,” he writes. “We are way ahead of you. We envision an app that not only bundles gorgeous film looks within the app, but also lets you import looks built by other people. In fact, we built Kino as an experiment in the future of Halide!
“There's just one feature that didn't make it into Kino, due to time constraints and technologies that weren't ready for prime time a year ago…”
Process Zero does not support HDR— for what Sandofsky says are a few good reasons. From a product perspective, there's an issue of taste, with a lot of cameras producing obnoxious HDR images. “We want to take our time and come up with a thoughtful and nuanced HDR look,” he writes.
Another issue is compatibility. Many websites cannot display HDR images, despite the fact that if you take pictures with Apple's default algorithms, HDR is included. This is changing, however, with Instagram being among those platforms now supporting it.
“We think compatibility will improve thanks to iOS 18, which introduces "Adaptive HDR," a technology that allows old file formats such as JPEG to support HDR. This should make it easier for every platform to hop on the HDR bandwagon,” says Sandofsky. “We think HDR is about to hit a tipping point, which is why we want to sort out support as we invest in our color grading machinery.”
Color us intrigued……
Finally, in 2025, Halide Mark II turns five years old, and iPhone photography has changed a lot in five years. That means that Halide is getting a redesign.
“We think Halide's refreshed camera design will follow HDR and Grade support because form should follow function,” says Sandofsky. “We can’t quite reveal it — but we can tell you it will be gorgeous in both form and function. For example, if Halide's version of Instant Grade goes as smooth as we think it will, we'll make grade-picking central to the UI, just like Kino.
Sandofsky saying that he and De With are fond of John Carmack’s quote: “It’s done when it’s done” likely gives you an indication that this is not imminent. As he points out, there will be a new iOS platform in the shape of the iPhone 18 in the fall of 2025, and that always interrupts things as they need to integrate all its new bells and whistles into the existing Halide.
So, the good news here is that if you are a current subscriber of Halide Mark II, you get Mark III as well. The same goes for Halide Mark II one-time purchases. The bad news is that all he will say is that they would love to ship it in 2025. “That sounds doable at this moment, but we'll keep you posted as things progress,” he says.
Meanwhile, they’re not taking their eye off the Kino ball and promise more features for that on the way.
For more, check out Lux’s new Halide+Kino Discord channel.