I really enjoyed Kyle Chayka’s latest piece for The New Yorker about using the Process Zero feature of the Halide camera app for iPhone, which forgoes the AI-powered image processing that iOS applies by default.
My phone camera roll looks different now. There are fewer repeats or slight variations on the same image, taken in a burst. The compositions are less static or symmetrical, and the colors are funkier. I have a Halide snapshot of some leaves casting shadows on a tree’s trunk, which occupies most of the frame. Whereas the Apple phone app tends to turn every color warm, this one is very blue and cool, and the background behind the tree is dim rather than eye-burningly brightened. But I prefer the photo that way: the visual qualities of the specific scene are still there to be appreciated. It doesn’t, and shouldn’t, look like everything else.
I’ve been using Process Zero the past few weeks as my main shooting mode, and I couldn’t agree more. I don’t see myself going back to the iPhone’s default image processing.
It occurs to me that Process Zero is popular for the same reason as Instagram’s original filters—imperfections imbue a kind of personality that feels more human. AI-perfected pixels feel cold and lifeless because they optimize and average away the details, leaving photos without any distinct “vibe.”
The images that an iPhone produces by default are a form of advertising for Apple. Buy an iPhone, snap a photo, and it will always look great. The uniformity of the experience ensures the results are always good, but it has the side effect of preventing them from feeling great.
Apple has a history of sherlocking great features introduced first in third party apps, and I would be very pleased if they decided to bake this into the native camera app.