CheckMag | Why Luma Camera and Presets is one of the best "actually free" Halide alternatives for RAW photography on iOS

Free iPhone camera apps promising pro-level RAW and manual controls are quite rare - and even rarer are ones that truly deliver without the usual "gotchas." Luma Camera & Presets, developed solo by Rafal Kopiec, claims to serve demanding mobile photographers with just that, minus the bloat, minus a paywall. Is it genuinely good enough to replace Halide for users who care about image quality and hands-on control?

Controls and core experience

Luma’s biggest draw is full manual control: shoot RAW (including ProRAW on supported models), fine-tune ISO, white balance, and shutter speed, and work around Apple’s heavy-handed processing. However, note that this isn’t a basic point-and-shoot substitute - it’s for users who want to dictate how their images are captured and processed, from exposure to export. 

The UI can feel stark, clunky, and even quirky in spots, with minor bugs and a steep learning curve for newcomers, but it’s purpose-driven: you know what every slider does, and you won’t find extra fluff or endless pop-ups.

Luma has a neat custom preset and LUT system. Unlike Halide, where creative looks are mostly done in post, Luma’s processing pipeline lets you build, import, and apply presets directly in-camera. The "Test" button preview shows your scene with the chosen preset and EDR, which can give you a direct idea of the final output even before you take a picture - no more guessing what your RAW will look like on export. It should be a time-saver for professionals, but also useful for hobbyists.

Additionally, you can already share presets via the iOS Files app, and while there’s talk of a future preset marketplace, for now, power users can round-trip their styles between device and desktop workflows.

Despite some assumptions, Luma is currently truly free: no subscription, no nag screens, no gated features for export. Developer Rafal Kopiec confirms all essentials - including RAW capture, manual controls, and exporting images - are available to everyone, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Only future computational features (such as advanced image stacking) might be a one-time paid add-on, but this will remain separate from Luma’s core.

Luma’s strengths are genuine flexibility and user-first design, though it isn’t as slick or stable as Halide in every situation (yet). You’ll deal with the occasional UI quirk, and you’ll need a fair amount of patience to get the best from its rawest tools - but the core features look to be pretty robust and the approach seems to be transparent so far.

Q&A with Rafal Kopiec, creator of Luma

Q: What core problems in iPhone photography were you trying to address with Luma?

A: A common complaint over the years with iPhone cameras was the overprocessing performed by Apple. The native camera app is very good at being an all-rounder, given that it neatly adapts to quick photos of some text someone might want to remember, a selfie, and a photograph of an expansive landscape... As it is with most things, the one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t always produce the best results, which is why we have a vibrant third party camera app ecosystem. After using a lot of different apps, I found that there weren’t many examples that catered to my personal use-case that well - I wanted to take photos in standard, bayer raw, and process them in a predictable way.

Q: How did you design the preset and LUT system, and what can advanced users achieve with it? Also, will there be a community pool in the near-future where presets can be shared?

A: The idea of Presets is quite central to Luma, as it allows people to create quick go-to styles, potentially expanding their creative output... What sets Luma apart here is that these Presets can be set directly in-camera, such that they would already be applied to the photograph once the user is ready to develop the photos from that session. It is a time saver.

This, combined with the new pipeline of image processing, allows for the unique feature in Luma’s camera - the “Test” button. Raw photos are notoriously hard to capture when it comes to dealing with exposure, and so now all it takes is to hold down on this button to get a fast, EDR-capable preview directly in the viewfinder... Regarding sharing Presets - they technically already are shareable via file transfer, because they’re accessible from the Files app. I do have a rough goal to host a lightweight Preset market for users to publish their styles, but I believe that it’s still a bit early for that. This was actually a feature back in Luma 2 - but that was definitely too early.

Q: What were the biggest technical or design hurdles in building Luma 4.0? How do you see the evolution of computational photography impacting independent app developers?

A: Simplicity in design is hard. Luma 4 has been in the works for about 2 years or so, and over that time I’ve designed over a hundred different control layouts... Regarding computational photography - I do believe that there are benefits to both single-frame capture and multi-frame stacking... Many people with "real cameras" out there specifically opt for prime lenses instead of zooms - they give themselves limitations in order to boost their creativity. I think this is the same case with mobile photography - sure, it can be easy to take a photograph allowing the phone to merge together 10 exposures into one, but single-exposure photographs are often, in my eyes at least, much more beautiful. Having said that, I do already have prototypes for upcoming versions of Luma that support image stacking and bracketing, actionable both in-camera and in already-imported photos in the gallery.

Q: What future features or directions are you considering for Luma? Do you plan on keeping Luma free in the future, and if not, what kind of subscription plan did you have in mind?

A: Future features will include Luma’s own version of computational photography, hopefully to rival Apple’s own implementation - with the benefit of having the entire pipeline controlled by the user... Regarding pricing - this is a hobby project of mine, and so what’s currently published is free, and will stay free forever. Computational photography (image stacking) will be an optional feature that isn’t required for the general idea of the app, but that will be paid, probably in the neighborhood of a $3.99 single payment. Camera apps shouldn’t need subscriptions.

Should you switch?

If you’re a raw beginner, Luma will probably frustrate more than it liberates. If you’re even slightly advanced - and especially if you want to avoid subscriptions and experiment with custom looks - it is easily the one of the best free alternative out there. Minor bugs and UI flaws aside, Luma is a rare find in a space overcrowded by marketing hype and recurring costs. For photographers who demand manual control, Luma is both a powerful tool and a solid example of what a focused indie developer can achieve.