Halide Integration

[John A.]

The Halide camera app features a shortcut to open RawPower. Using the new Process Zero capture setting in Halide, the file opened for editing in RawPower is a 12 MP DNG file. Is this file a linear DNG file which has been demosaiced by Halide, i.e., with Process Zero applied, or is it simply a regular single-shot DNG RAW file? In the absence of any real information from Halide (Lux) some are speculating that only the accompanying HEIC produced by Halide exhibits the Process Zero effect. Thanks.

[Nik Bhatt]

I just shot a Process Zero image and compared it to a RAW shot with the built-in camera app. The Halide image is smaller than the ProRAW file from the camera, so that leads me to suspect it’s not a linear DNG (as ProRAW files are Linear DNGs). The Process Zero image looks quite different from the Camera app’s image, so I believe that the RAW is just that. A RAW. I suggest trying the same experiment.

[John A.]

Thank-you, Nik. Yes, I have made the same observation regarding file sizes. Further, examination of the Halide DNG output files in ExifTool is consistent with what I find for similar files from ProCamera (Cocologic) and CameraPixels, other third-party iPhone camera apps. In FastRawViewer, the histograms from sequential images from these cameras are essentially identical. In short, there is nothing to suggest that the Halide DNG files are anything but the usual single-shot DNG RAW files. The Halide Process Zero feature seems to be an in-app demosaicing algorithm that outputs HEIC or JPEG files, nothing more.

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