Halide’s big 3.0 upgrade has been on our radar since late 2024. Today, the pro camera app has arrived in the form of Halide Mark III. It brings three key photography upgrades to the experience.

Halide’s 3.0 upgrade focuses on taking better photos

As forecasted in December 2024, Halide Mark III promises to improve the iPhone’s photography game in a variety of ways.

First, Halide Mark III starts with a focus on taking better photos from the moment you hit the shutter button. This is thanks to a new feature called Halide Looks:

We’re excited to finally unveil Halide Looks, our gorgeous, physically accurate alternative processes. Combined with our film simulation engine, and optional HDR, photographers now have an incredible set of creative tools to express themselves. Mark III launches with five looks, each of them developed for a specific intent.

Here’s how the look picker appears in the new update:

The five Halide Looks included in Mark III are:

• Valencia: “A great look for landscapes and cityscapes, with interesting effects on portraiture and skin tones. It features thick contrast, deep saturation, and solid color separation.”
• Rembrandt: “Our portrait look, where thick contrast in the mid-tones emphasizes bone structure and lighting. Abundant color in the low end converges to white as exposure increases, for perfect uniformity in skin-tones to emphasize contour of the face. Compared to the default iPhone processing, we find the differences striking.”
• Nova: “Best suited for landscapes and cityscapes rather than portraiture, it features exceptional color, with tight contrast and smooth peachy highlights.”
• Zephyr: “A subtle and restrained look, it features subtle filmic contrast, paired with rich skin tones and foliage. It has the character of a traditional print, but its neutral tone scale and tuned contrast make it a great choice for a wide variety of scenes and visual intents.”
• Chrome Noir: “Our in-house, panchromatic black and white look featuring medium contrast.”

These are examples of each look provided by Halide:

Halide Mark III also includes a new photo editor and a camera redesign

Next up, Halide 3.0 brings a new photo editor experience to the app with the new Photo Lab:

When shooting with RAW enabled, you can edit your photos later in Halide’s new Photo Lab. It isn’t an editor. It’s better.

From the moment you open the Photo Lab, you’re presented with the Quick Edit section. Within seconds, you can audition different looks, adjust exposure, and toggle HDR and film simulations. If that isn’t enough, with a few swipes you can adjust framing, color balance, and more.

The new Photo Lab feature will even let you “edit RAW files created by Canon, Sony, Nikon, Leica, Fujifilm and Hasselblad cameras” as a beta feature.

This is the first time Halide has shifted from solely focusing on iPhone photography to also being a photo editor for standalone cameras.

The new photo editor may be especially useful on iPad, where Halide Mark III is also available.

Lastly, there’s the pro camera user interface design in Halide Mark III:

Composition is the bedrock of photography, so we put composition tools front and center. Choose an aspect ratio that matches popular film cameras: 35mm (3:2), medium format (1:1), and pano (65:24). We even have a dynamic aspect ratio for Instagram, which changes depending on landscape or portrait. To the right of the aspect ratio button we have the composition overlay. Of course it includes the rule of thirds, but we’ve added a uniform grid, the golden ratio, and rabatment of the rectangle.

For Halide shooters who prefer the previous design, the Mark II camera layout is sticking around as an option as well.

Halide Mark III, out today, is a free upgrade for customers who purchased Halide Mark II. The new version is also available for Halide subscribers starting today.

Halide Mark III can be purchased outright for $59.99, or subscribers can access the new app for $19.99/year.

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