Meet the Looks
As I mentioned in my blog post, I returned to analog photography in 2023 and something surprised me. I thought I'd miss the infinite options of digital but I felt freed instead. A handful of great choices turned out to be more useful than endless ones.
That experience is what drove us to build Looks. We partnered with Hollywood colorist Cullen Kelly to develop five physically accurate looks, each designed with a specific intent.
The Five Looks
Valencia
Thick contrast, deep saturation, strong color separation. Designed for landscapes and cityscapes, but does interesting things to portraits too.
Rembrandt
Built for portraits. Midtone contrast that emphasizes bone structure and light, with colors that converge to white as exposure increases — perfect for skin tone uniformity.
Nova
Exceptionally colorful, with tight contrast and smooth peachy highlights. Best for landscapes and cityscapes — less suited to portraiture.
Zephyr
The most restrained of the five. Subtle filmic contrast, rich skin tones and foliage. A neutral character that works across a wide variety of scenes.
Chroma Noir
Our black and white look. Medium contrast and cinematic without being heavy-handed.
The Look picker. Tap the window in the lower right of the viewfinder to open it. The active Look is highlighted. Switching is instant — you'll see the viewfinder update in real time.
So how do you know which Look to choose? Just open the picker and cycle through. You'll develop a feel for them quickly. That said, here's a rough starting point: reach for Rembrandt when there's a person in the frame, Valencia or Nova for anything outdoors and colorful, Zephyr when you want something versatile and understated, and Chroma Noir when color would be a distraction.
You can also choose Apple from the Look picker to shoot with the standard iPhone camera look. On an iPhone Pro, this captures a ProRAW instead of a Bayer RAW, which lets you toggle between Apple's rendering and Halide's looks later in the Photo Lab.
Valencia (left) vs. Zephyr (right). The choice of Look is as much a creative decision as your composition or exposure.
HDR and film simulation
Every Look includes HDR support, which recovers detail in highlights and shadows that is lost in a standard dynamic range photo. It's turned on by default, and we recommend leaving it that way — once you've seen it in action, standard range will feel flat.
Each Look also runs through Halide's film simulation engine, which adds grain, halation, MTF (think of it as micro-contrast), and vignetting. If any of those elements aren't to your taste, you can disable them individually in the Photo Lab's Film tab, which we'll cover on Day 6.
Lesson 2: we'll cover composition, including the new aspect ratio picker, the full set of composition guides including the golden ratio and rabatment, and how to use the level tool to straighten your shots.