AI camera with HDR, low light, and more (RAW)

Versions

• Can I use Hydra 2 with any iOS device?

  You need an iOS device running iOS 14.3 or higher. Hydra makes use of artificial intelligence (AI) and it performs a lot faster on devices with the Apple Neural Engine (ANE), which first appeared starting with iPhone XR/XS in 2018.
  
  

• As a user of Hydra 1, can I get a upgrade pricing for version 2?

  Yes. We are currently offering a 50% discount for Hydra 2's Pro Pack to users who purchased Hydra 1 prior to Hydra 2's release. Make sure to have the latest version of Hydra 1 and Hydra 2 installed on your device, launch Hydra 1, and follow the upgrade sheet from there to get upgrade pricing.
  
  

• What do you mean by “universal app”?

  When purchasing Hydra, you can install and use it on any supported device. Let’s imagine you have an iPhone 13 and an iPad Pro, you can use Hydra on both devices after purchasing it only once. You don’t need to purchase it twice - once for your iPhone and once for your iPad - like you have to do with many other apps.
  To make a long story short, by “universal app” we mean that a single application contains both versions (i.e. iPhone and iPad).
  
  

• Do you plan to release Hydra for other mobile phones?

  Why not? Please get in touch with us through our Facebook webpage or Twitter account.
  
  

• Is Hydra also available on computers?

  Yes, it is. On Mac, Hydra is an application for making HDR pictures out of a single or multiple photo exposures. You can use Hydra for Mac on computers supporting macOS 10.12 and higher. More information about Hydra for Mac here.
  

Modes

• How can I get more information about the various modes?

  In addition to the Normal mode (built-in shooting capabilities), Hydra comes with a number of AI-powered shooting modes for specific photographic tasks: HDR, Lo-light, Macro, Zoom, Hi-res. HDR lets you shoot when the scene has both highlights and deep shadows that can't typically be captured on a single photo (dynamic range too high), Lo-light is for improving photo quality (reduce noise) when it is dark, Macro & Zoom to enhance resolution, and Hi-res to shoot a high-resolution photo that can be enlarged when printed.
  
  Help is available within Hydra. Go to the Camera Settings, tap the (i) symbol, then Camera Modes Help. There you'll find additional options about the shooting modes.
  
  

• Is it possible to add information about the location where I took the picture with Hydra?

  Yes, there’s the geotag option available for this in Hydra’s settings. When activated, Hydra will automatically add location information to the picture metadata.
  
  

• How can I evaluate Hydra’s efficiency?

  You can save the original image so that you can compare it with the Hydra-processed picture. Check if the option is activated in Capture Settings > Formats. You can also compare side-by-side the processed photo to the original demosaiced RAW photo within the Photo Editor just after shooting.
  
  

Troubleshooting

• Hydra crashes when shooting in Hi-res mode, is there a fix?

  Yes! Hi-res mode is particularly demanding in terms of computing resources. Starting with Hydra 2.0.4, specific optimizations have been brought to enable 110MP shooting on older devices. We recommend that you update Hydra to that release or a more recent one.
  
  

• Hydra says it can't shoot because it needs an Internet connection. Why is that?

  Hydra uses encrypted Core ML models that are stored on your iPhone within Hydra, but it needs to fetch the decryption key on first use. Photo storage & all processing occur directly on your phone, not in the cloud. A number of users with jailbroken phones have reported that even though they have an active Internet connection, Hydra is reporting this error. It appears that the Core ML inner workings disable decryption key fetching on jailbroken devices. Some users have reported that rebooting your iPhone and immediately using Hydra before activating the jailbreak do enable the decryption. Note that we don't support the jailbreak, and this Core ML limitation is outside of our reach as developers.
  
  

Formats

• Are there any constraints about photo formats usage?

  Format availability depends on modes & device capabilities, as well as destination (Files or Album). HEIC requires an iPhone 7 or later. Apple ProRAW requires an iPhone 12 Pro or later. Please refer to the following table.
  
  Additional notes:
  • Unprocessed photo is always JPEG. It consists of the reference RAW with quick demosaicing & basic color processing but with no further processing. It gives a faithful view of what comes from the photo sensor.
  • DNG and Apple ProRAW are mutually exclusive because of a technical limitation.
  • Hi-res outout (full resolution) is always JPEG as a custom encoder is required for 27, 49, 110 MP.
  • Hi-res can't use the Photo Editor, but users presets are honored.
  • JPEG XL is provided in beta form. It is a very promising format with advanced features (32-bit float, layers, compression performance), but can't be used or displayed currently in iOS.
  
  
  

  	Normal	HDR	Lo-light	Macro	Zoom	Hi-res
  JPEG	Album, Files	Album, Files	Album, Files	Album, Files	Album, Files	Album, Files
  Unprocessed JPEG	Album, Files	Album, Files	Album, Files	Album, Files	Album, Files	Album, Files
  HEIC	Album, Files (iPhone 7)	Album, Files (iPhone 7)	Album, Files (iPhone 7)	Album, Files (iPhone 7)	Album, Files (iPhone 7)	N/A
  TIFF	Album, Files	Album, Files	Album, Files	Album, Files	Album, Files	N/A
  JPEG XL	Files	Files	Files	Files	Files	N/A
  DNG	Album, Files	Album, Files	Album, Files	Album, Files	Album, Files	Album, Files
  ProRAW (DNG)	Album, Files (iPhone 12 Pro)	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
  TIFF-32	N/A	Files	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
  OpenEXR	N/A	Files	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
  Radiance	N/A	Files	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A