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Meet the Anti-AI Photo app, Halide

Perfect timing to show us photographs the way we really see it

(This newsletter is sponsored by me, alerting you about the three mobile photography video courses I have available: beginning iPhone, iPhone 16 and Google Pixel. http://www.jeffersongraham.com/courses)

You gotta love a photography application that calls itself the “Anti-AI” app.

Halide has my name written all over it.

The app has actually been around for several years, since 2017, but recently added a new feature called “Process Zero,” which lets us photograph things the way we actually see them, as opposed to how we’d like to remember the world. That means no fake blue skies, no artificially enhanced colors, no over-sharpened images.

The app, which costs $19.99 yearly or $2.99 monthly, produces “zero computational photography to produce natural, film-like photos,” Halide says. Yay! (Sorry Galaxy and Pixel fans—Halide is only available for the iPhone and iPad.)

Top, iPhone 16 Pro Apple fake blue sky, over sharpened. The bottom shot, again on the iPhone 16 Pro, is with the Halide app. All the photos shown here are unedited.

My beef on the AI revolution is that it’s great for looking up things, transcribing interviews, getting cars to drive automatically and for photo editing—but not for photo taking.

I’ve written about how Google has taken a step towards ruining photography as we know it with the new Pixel 9 series of photos that offers features to add people to the photo, and do things that just aren’t there.

Google’s “Add Me,” lets you take a photo of say, the two of you, and add a third person to the image after the fact, while the really controversial one is called Remagine, which turns ordinary photos into unlabeled generative AI artwork. Yuck.

Google’s AdMe feature

Apple has made a big deal of new AI features coming to the iPhone, but luckily they don’t include altering major reality as part of the deal.

However, what Apple, Samsung and Google have done is to take a basic camera and turn it into something that never produces an image that’s out of focus, rarely too dark or light, with computational skills. The phone cameras take 9 images every time you click the shutter and merges them into one master photo with few flaws.

As the Verge noted in an iPhone review about Halide: “If you’re one of the many people who think that iPhone photos look overprocessed lately, then this is the feature for you.”

The New Yorker, of all places, did a feature on Halide this week that you should check out. When’s the last time the New Yorker did a piece on an app? Just wondering.

“Process Zero has made me enjoy taking photos with my phone again, because I don’t feel like I’m constantly fighting against algorithmic editing that I can’t control or predict,” writes the author Kyle Chayka in the New Yorker.

Halide notes that turning off the auto features has tradeoffs. It admits that it can’t handle low light well and cannot access some features of the iPhone, notably the 2x zoom feature that crops a portion of the 48 megapixel sensor to “zoom” in and get closer.

Top, iPhone, with enhanced orange and flag, bottom shot is with Halide.

I’ve included here many examples of Apple vs. Halide, so you can see for yourself. You may prefer the Apple approach, which has its place—in many of these shots, the extra color is nice to have, but as a rule, I’d rather have the option to add those looks myself in editing afterwards, and have a cleaner image to play with.

Top: Apple Photos shot, bottom via the Halide app. You can see how the colors are actually crisper in the Halide photo, minus the fake darkened sky.

If you have the new iPhone 16, you might have heard about the “Camera Control” button on the side of the phone which lets you click to open the camera, without having to use FaceID. The button can be programmed to make Halide the default camera.

Meanwhile, let me tell you more about the Halide app. It’s incredibly simple.

At the top of the screen you click the drop-down menu to select “Process Zero” or “Apple Processed” photos. Another tool lets you select Auto or Manual exposure, which you can tweak by pressing down on the screen and making the image lighter or darker.

At the bottom of the app, you choose which lens you want to use, .5, 1x or 5x, the ability to use the Portrait Mode to blur the background and selfie mode. Hidden after a swipe is the flash, timer, white balance and settings, where you can choose to photograph in the traditional JPG, the HEIC smaller file, or larger RAW.

Again, you may prefer the auto features, and that’s fine, but if you want to go back to the days where a photo was a photo, without enhancement that can’t be tweaked, you should check out Halide.

Newsbytes

Instafamous: If you want to be seen on Instagram, but don’t feel like making a highly produced short Reels video, Instagram announced this week that Carousels and photos with music now can show up in the Reels tab too, which it favors over basic photo posts. Get busy creators!

A post shared by @creators

Amazon Stinks: When the company announced that it was adding adverts to its Prime Video offerings, unless we paid a fee, it said it would offer limited ads and not be obnoxious. Well, that didn’t last very long. This week Amazon said it will start increasing the ad load in the coming year. Surprise, surprise!

Speaking of AI editing: Software giant Adobe announced several new photo editing tools at its MAX conference in Miami, including the ability generate seconds of video footage from a text prompt in its Premiere Pro video editing program, and new tools for Lightroom Mobile. Here you can automatically apply effects for retouching backgrounds, teeth, eyes, skin, and more.

Let’s go to Japan!

On tonight’s episode of Photowalks on Scripps, we visit the Kansai region of Japan, including stops to Japan’s “Kitchen” of Osaka, the street food capital of the country, and the lively port city of Kobe. The show airs at 8 p.m. ET on Scripps News.

Mobile Photography on Flipboard

I have a long-standing relationship with the digital social magazine Flipboard, one of the great apps for getting a curated look at things of interest. I’m currently the photographer in residence there for the fall—and the great Mia Q just posted a nice interview with me on Flipboard that you might enjoy!

My late father Jerry hanging in our Recycled Records store in San Francisco

Record Store Days

I got such great response to last Sunday’s bonus edition, talking about my days working as a clerk at a used record store in Berkeley at age 20, and all the important life lessons I learned at that time. But I broke the format of this newsletter, with nothing about tech, travel or photography in the story. Should I continue with my tale, I asked readers.

“I’m loving learning the back story,” commented Josh.

“I love reading about your adventures,” said Brian.

“More, more, more Jeff” requested Jolene.

Thank you! So by popular demand, I have part 3 of my personal history all cued up and ready for you in tomorrow’s edition. Thanks so much for the interest!

And as always, thanks again for taking the time to read, watch and listen!

Jeff

Jefferson Graham's PhotowalksTV newsletter - Tech & Travel
PhotowalksTV Podcast with Jefferson Graham
The PhotowalksTV podcast with Jefferson Graham is the companion to the YouTube travel photography series, featuring the writer-photographer and former USA TODAY columnist.