sandofsky

Apple limits TestFlight to 10,000 testers. Folks who are paying a recurring fee expect to see more frequent updates, so they get priority.

Halide shouldn't be afflicted by the lost photo issue you're talking about. Normally, if you close a lock-screen extension before a photo is written, it won't be in your library. This can be a problem when the user quickly smashes the capture button and your photo queue gets backed up.

Luckily, the unlocked app gets a chance later to access the content of lock-screen capture sessions. So our strategy in Halide is to write the intermediate files to disk as soon as you initiate a capture; this should take a split second. When we have uninterruptible time, later, we make sure the photo finished writing to your library, and if not, we try again.

However, Apple's documentation isn't clear if the OS will "wake-up" your main app to process unfinished photos, or if it relies on the user launching the app. I'll just say that I dog-food Halide every day by capturing photos of my toddler, and I can't remember the last time I lost a shot.

We switched to Apple's StoreKit 2 framework, which uses different internal plumbing. Not only is it the recommended way moving forward from Apple, but it improves the user experience for purchase management.

The issue is that, indeed, it actually validates that the App Store account currently logged in purchased the app. I believe this is intended behavior, as it closes a piracy loophole where you could log into the Apple ID of a friend, download all their paid apps, and then log in to a different account while retaining access.

If other apps don't run into this problem, it's possible they haven't moved on to StoreKit 2. Or the app has their own login independent of app subscription; setting aside the time it would take me to build that, I don't think most people are willing to create an account to try a camera app.

> I'm actually appalled they use the term "AI" considering who they are but that doesn't matter, it's ML.

I agree, and I built it!

The app launched in 2019. Ideally I would have said ML, but it felt like AI had more recognition among non-technical users.

If I launched it in 2026, it would 100% say "ML" not only because it's more technically accurate, but to make it abundantly clear it doesn't generate slop.

If the sunflower and Osaka photos aren’t in HDR, there’s something off with your system. Make sure you aren’t in low-power mode.

Fun fact: the HDR photos are actually looping videos, because that’s way more reliable for browsers and CMS platforms than actual HDR photos. Hopefully this improves in the next few years.

Grain will definitely be tweaked! It landed late in the release cycle, and I want to give it more love before the final launch.

Hey everyone. Halide guy here!

This post came out a few weeks ago. To answer your question in advance, your favorite thing from Mark II that’s missing is eventually coming to Mark III.

I’m right now on a short detour updating our video app, Kino. I couldn’t justify touching it until this Mark III preview was out. After that, look for a few more Mark III preview updates before the big launch.

Not going to lie, it’s been an exhausting 12 months, but I’m genuinely excited for what’s ahead.

> It's about HDR from the perspective of still photography, in your app, on iOS, in the context of hand-held mobile devices.

It's from the perspective of still photography, video, film, desktop computing, decades of research papers, and hundreds of years of analog photography, condensed into something approachable.

> However in the much broader context of HN, a highly technical community whose interests in imaging are diverse, the article's content level and narrow focus aren't consistent with the headline title. It seems written at a level appropriate for novice users.

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity"

To be clear, I didn't submit the post, and I never submit my posts. I don't care if my posts make a splash here, and kind of dread when they do because anything involving photography or video attracts the most annoying "well actually" guys on the Internet.

> When I saw the post's headline I thought "Cool! We really need a good technical deep dive into the mess that is HDR - including tech, specs, standards, formats, content acquisition, distribution and display across content types including stills, video clips and cinematic story-telling and diverse viewing contexts from phones to TVs to cinemas to VR."

The post is called, "What is HDR," and the introduction explains the intended audience. That audience is much larger than "people who want to read about ITU-R Recommendation BT.2100." But if you think people are interested in a post like that, by all means write it.

This post is written for people who have heard "HDR" and feel confused. That introduction lists two types of HDR people might think about. "The first" means "the first of two types we're going to explain," not "the first research in the chronological history of HDR."

> It seems like a mistake to lump HDR capture, HDR formats and HDR display together, these are very different things.

These are all related things. When you talk about color, you can be talking about color cameras, color image formats, and color screens, but the concept of color transcends the implementation.

> The claim that Ansel Adams used HDR is super likely to cause confusion, and isn’t particularly accurate.

The post never said Adams used HDR. I very carefully chose the words, "capturing dramatic, high dynamic range scenes."

> Previously when you took a photo, if you over-exposed it or under-exposed it, you were stuck with what you got. Capturing HDR gives the photographer one degree of extra freedom, allowing them to adjust exposure after the fact.

This is just factually wrong. Film negatives have 12-stops of useful dynamic range, while photo paper has 8 stops at best. That gave photographers exposure latitude during the print process.

> Ansel Adams wasn’t using HDR in the same sense we’re talking about, he was just really good at capturing the right exposure for his medium without needing to adjust it later.

There's a photo of Ansel Adams in the article, dodging and burning a print. How would you describe that if not adjusting the exposure?