Iris | Mohtasham

I started Iris because the manual camera apps I found for iPhone were expensive. Paying for another app or subscription should not be the only way to control shutter speed, ISO, focus, white balance, exposure, and RAW capture.

Iris is my attempt to build a free alternative. The first release is planned as an iPhone still camera with automatic capture when you want it and full manual controls when you do not. I designed and built the current prototype alone. Its interface takes inspiration from Halide 3, but Iris uses its own branding, controls, icons, and visual system.

My work

Product designInterface designDevelopment

Current build

Expo SDK 57 prototypeBrowser demoNo released camera app

First release

Free and open sourceiPhone stillsOffline without an account

Why I want it to be open source

Open-source software is how I learned much of what I know about building products. I could inspect real projects, understand how they worked, change things, break them, and try again. Iris should offer that same opportunity to someone else.

The app will be free and open source. It is for anyone who wants more control over an iPhone photograph without paying for a professional camera app. Someone should be able to use it as a simple automatic camera, then move into shutter speed, ISO, manual focus, white balance, exposure compensation, zoom, and DNG capture as they learn.

The Iris automatic camera viewfinder prototype with RAW, autofocus, zoom, Look, and shutter controls — The Expo prototype tests how camera controls can stay close without covering the frame.

The Iris Photo Lab prototype showing five Looks and an exposure dial — The Photo Lab prototype explores Look selection, intensity, and direct editing controls.

Planned first-release flow

01Open the camera

Grant camera access and enter the viewfinder without an account.

02Choose a mode

Shoot in Auto or open the manual control tray.

03Set the photograph

Adjust focus, exposure, white balance, format, zoom, and Look.

04Capture

Create one processed photo or supported DNG per shutter tap.

05Review and save

Keep the original, change the Look, share, or save to Photos.

This is the intended v1 path. The current app implements the interface, not the native capture pipeline.

What works in the prototype

The mobile app is currently an interactive interface prototype. It has Auto and Manual modes, control dials, RAW and aspect-ratio controls, composition guides, zoom shortcuts, haptics, a Look selector, and Photo Lab editing screens. It does not yet connect those controls to a production iPhone camera pipeline, and it cannot take a real photograph today.

The public website has a browser demo built around a sample image. Visitors can move the focus point, change the crop, select a Look, adjust simulated exposure, and render a JPEG or PNG through canvas. I used AI to draft the current Look recipes. They are prototype starting points, not copied camera profiles, and they still need device testing so the live preview and saved photograph produce the same result.

Prototype today and the native path ahead

Interface now

Expo camera shellModes, dials, grids, zoom, haptics, and Looks

Photo LabLook and editing panels around a mock image

Simulation now

Viewfinder mockSupplied image behind the mobile controls

Browser canvasCSS preview and JPEG or PNG rendering

Native foundation next

Custom Expo buildSigned development client on a physical iPhone

Camera capability reportDevice formats, lenses, ISO, focus, and RAW support

Capture pipeline later

Live camera previewCapability-aware Auto and Manual controls

Processed or RAW fileHEIC or JPEG plus DNG where supported

iOS PhotosReliable save, retry, and recent-capture review

The first two columns exist as prototypes. The native foundation and capture pipeline remain development work.

demo actioncurrent behavior

tap viewfinder

Move the focus markerThe demo changes the visual focus point and crop anchor

choose a lens

Change the cropCSS scale and canvas coordinates simulate a focal-length change

select a Look

Apply a color recipeThe same filter values feed the preview and canvas export

adjust exposure

Change brightnessA browser filter simulates the visible exposure response

choose RAW

Render a PNGThis is a demo stand-in and not real sensor DNG data

press shutter

Rasterize the sample imageCanvas produces a downloadable JPEG or PNG

The browser demo tests the interaction model without claiming a phone capture pipeline.

Repositoryworkspaces

apps/
  mobile/   # Expo interface prototype
  web/      # Astro product site and canvas demo
docs/       # Product and contributor documentation

npm install && npm run mobile

The camera interface and product site live in one workspace.

Turning the prototype into a camera

The hardest part is the iPhone camera API. Iris uses Expo SDK 57, but the App Store version of Expo Go available when I tested it did not accept the project during the SDK transition. Expo Go is useful for interface work, but the complete manual-control and image-processing stack needs a custom Expo development build and testing on a physical iPhone.

The next milestone is a signed build with camera permissions, a stable live preview, one reliable capture per shutter tap, camera switching, orientation handling, save recovery, and a recent-photo thumbnail. After a 100-shot reliability test, I can add hardware-derived manual ranges, locked controls, DNG capture, GPU-rendered Looks, and preview-to-export color checks. I plan to release Iris through TestFlight and eventually the App Store, but neither exists today.