How much AI is too much AI in pictures? Would you rather have your photos have some grain or have everything look sharpened with bright colors? Do you like what your eyes actually saw or the color-boosted eye-pleasing material appearing on your phone’s screen?

Here is an example. Take a look at the color of the sky. Now look at how the iPhone’s camera perceives it, with all the computation algorithms and signature color tone applied. It’s brazen how vastly different the real versus iPhone color chemistry is. If you go to Reddit and Apple’s Discussions forum, you will run into more contrarian views about the right approach to smartphone photography than there are theories about alien life.

Social media posits that the more colors pop in your photo, the more arresting they are. Purists would have you believe that every soul should make digital memories that are as close to reality as possible.

“Oh, Samsung, the lord of oversaturation.” “Bah, iPhone, too much sharpening and paint-over effect.” “The Pixel is accurate but too boring.” These are recurring arguments among toxic phone users.

What is Project Zero?

AI in mobile photography is inevitable, whether you like it or not. On one hand, were it not for AI tricks, we wouldn’t have features like Night Sight wowing us with low-light capture. On some occasions, AI goes overboard and makes a mess out of colors.

Let’s also drop the phrase “computational photography,” which is just a fancy way for a brand to say that its “crack team” applied AI algorithms to photos to make them look good. Notably, every major brand has its own unique photo-processing pipeline.

Most users are content with it. Some do a bit of touch-up in apps like Snapseed. Then there are the manual control savants and RAW aficionados who know what subtle differences in exposure, shadows, and highlights can do to an otherwise bland click.

What if your photos were captured without AI or proprietary image processing rules? What if that perk also came with the RAW capture bonus? That’s the entire premise of Process Zero, an entirely new capture preset in the well-received Halide camera app.

“This is not a photo filter — it really develops photos at the raw, sensor-data level,” says the company. I’ve been using it for the past couple of weeks, and I’ve been mighty impressed by the sheer originality in the pictures I’ve clicked with my iPhone 15 Pro Max.

The best part about Process Zero is that there’s no learning process involved unless you want to fiddle with sliders. The only requirement is that your phone must be running iOS 17 or later. There is no wall baseline drawn here between the “capable” Pro and the “meh” mainline iPhones.

In Process Zero mode, the Halide app clicks a regular JPEG and a DNG (digital negative) you can play with in editing apps like Lightroom. There is even a quick exposure adjustment dial to spark some life into the digital negative.

Take, for example, this click of a tree I clicked in the wee hours of the morning, with a ton of street and decorative lights around. The first one is the DNG captured by Halide Process Zero and edited in Lightroom. I reduced the highlights, blacks, vibrancy, and temperature (to negate the yellow streaks from a nearby lamp) while slightly boosting the shadows, white level, and saturation.

Below is the HEIF I clicked from the default iPhone camera app. Notice the smoothened-out texture of clouds in the night sky. Those clouds were not visible to the naked eye to begin with. It was the iPhone’s Night Mode kicking into action, and then it aggressively de-noised the picture.

Even in broad daylight, while capturing bright subjects like flower petals, the iPhone often delivers photos that are a total chromatic mess. The color accuracy goes for a toss; the branches are darkened, and details from the foliage are lost.

Despite the edits, the Process Zero negative retains some grainy texture, which is not out of character for images captured in dark surroundings. Think of the output you would get from a film camera, which has its own distinct charm.

Daylight shots can be visibly different, but as soon as you enter the domain of challenging light, you have to grapple with noise in the RAW imgaes from Process Zero. While I like some grain, I often ran into unwanted color luminance, which I often had to mask by reducing the exposure and reducing the saturation in fringe areas.

Below is an edited version of the Process Zero picture and the same set of corrections applied to the vanilla camera app picture. The latter appears unnaturally enhanced and shallow.

Why should you experiment with Process Zero?

Before I head to another sample, it’s worth noting that applying edits to a non-filtered image is much easier than to a processed image. In the latter case, even subtle changes can dramatically alter the color chemistry and textures, often leaving a nearly unrecognizable image.

This is where the digital negatives captured by Process Zero come to the rescue. Think of Process Zero as that pristine canvas that clicks natural pictures and leaves a lot of space for editing. This can be anything from granular corrections to just applying some artistic filters.

By default, Process Zero pictures look visibly muted compared to what you get with a single click from the iPhone. As you edit them, you can amp up the color profile and make them look livelier without crushing the details.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of what I got by default. Notice the unnaturally blue color of the sky in the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s native click and the peripheral details, where poor shadow work is evident.

It goes without saying that RAW photos are, well, raw. They lack the fancy stacking and HDR computation pipeline that enhances colors and makes pictures look great on a phone’s screen. To the naked eye, they look flat and almost bland.

The shadows are dull, and there is little semblance to what you would perceive as depth. But when compared side to side with a picture clicked with the iPhone’s default camera, you start seeing the aggressive saturation at play and the shoddy work with exposure.

Project Zero doesn’t always deliver shots that can beat the iPhone’s default output. But there are occasions where a non-AI DNG is not only the more accurate version but also solves a few problems while at it — banding and paint-over effect.

The latter is a well-known iPhone problem, and it has only worsened over the years. In its bid to deliver well-defined objects in a picture, a lot of oversharpening is done, and if that means sacrificing some surface details to get rid of the noise, the iPhone won’t object to the approach.

As a result, we often see sharp lines, high contrast, and overexposed colors, losing subtleties of surface texture. This is especially evident in long-range shots. Take, for example, this shot of a boat in the ocean that was clicked at a 5x zoom level. Pay attention to the outline of the boat’s shape as well as the color transitions.

Now, look at the image next to it. It was taken in Process Zero mode. The boat looks a lot more natural, especially the edges. Yes, there is a visibly high amount of noise, but the grainy texture actually carries color information here. At the cost of sharp lines, it retains the original

Halide Process Zero is the iPhone camera tool I’ve been waiting for

Project Halide is not exactly a solution or some magic potion that will instantly lift your social media game. Instead, it’s a fun little experiment that shows what photos without a ton of on-device processing look like.

It’s more like a color purity filter, with the bonus of clicking a raw negative that you can use as a testbed to hone your photography skills or just play with filters. A healthy bunch of samples used in this story were edited in Lightroom on the iPhone. For a few, I imported them to Photoshop Express to apply precise color and exposure adjustments to the background and a handful of other subjects that should be in focus.

But what stood out for me was the relief from unrealistic image processing and the ability to get photos that look real in a sea of clicks choking on brute automatic adjustments. There is a sense of unmistakable realism in these pictures.

Of course, there are some drawbacks, too. For example, you can’t take 48-megapixel shots with Process Zero. Not yet. You can’t enjoy intermediate zoom range, as you are limited to shooting at the native magnification levels of each sensor.

It’s an experiment if I can take the liberty to describe it as such. But it’s a fulfilling contrarian approach to smartphone photography. It’s a hit or miss, too. But when the results are right, they are a sight to behold.

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