Apple ProRAW, the new RAW format available on iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone Pro Max. Available now in iOS 14.3. But you will not find a key for it in the camera application, and you have to activate it manually through the settings, learn what that feature is and how Apple took a big and bold step and took photography a big step forward.
What is Apple's ProRAW
When you take an image, it is compressed and saved in a compressed format such as JPG or PNG, so that its size is small, and this compression makes the image lose the original information it captured by the sensor.
The ProRAW photography feature is a feature that allows images to be captured and stored without applying any modifications to them, thus the camera takes data from the sensor and saves it directly in a freely adjustable raw format, and the sizes of these images are times the size of JPG images that are applied contrast, sharpness, and brightness settings to them, compressed and saved in memory. Thus, when modifying it, we will find it compressed and have effects that cannot be re-modified, so professional photographers avoid shooting in this format because there is automatic adjustment to it, and they prefer a format like RAW that they can modify as we mentioned, and there will be greater control over the exposure and color settings. And white balance, and adjustments can be made directly from the photos app or any third-party photo editing program.
The feature is only available on iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max
To activate the Apple ProRAW feature in the camera application, go to Settings - Camera - Formats, then just activate "Apple ProRAW". That's all it takes to play the new in-camera RAW format.
After activating the feature from the settings, a RAW button will be added at the top of the screen when in photography mode. Just click on that to activate it.
When turned on, Live Photos will be disabled, but all standard adjustment tools and features, such as Night Mode, Smart HDR, Deep Fusion, and more should work.
If you are new to RAW photography, it might surprise you that the file sizes of the images you take in ProRAW will be larger than the regular HEIC and JPEG files you were used to (about 25MB per image), and the size of ProRAW files can increase by 10 to 12 XNUMX times the size of JPEG images, according to Apple. You may find similar file sizes as HEIC and JPEG, but it all depends on what you are photographing, how much light, etc.
In the Photos application, photos will be named "RAW" when viewed, and will also appear in a separate folder called "RAW" in "Albums."
Apart from that ProRAW photos can be edited on the iOS Photos app with iOS 14.3 or later installed. You can also edit them on a Mac with macOS Big Sur 11.1 or later.
When you share a RAW file without saving any edits, you can share it as a DNG file via AirDrop or Image Capture on a Mac or Windows Photos on a PC. If you try to send a RAW image in mail or messages, it will automatically convert to JPG. If you make any edits to the RAW file, it will convert to JPG as well.
After the iOS 14.3 update was released by Ben Sandofsky, one of the developers of the popular camera app Halide, Explaining how ProRAW works. ProRAW is all about making RAW format more intuitive, he said, and he believes it could change how you shoot and edit images for beginners and experts alike.
As we mentioned, the standard RAW image does not include any processing so that adjustments can be made and customized according to personal preferences. It is great on DSLRs through professional cameras, but on the iPhone, it has some complications, as there are many processes that take place in the background, as Sandofsky explains, and for many shots, the iPhone devices take several pictures and then combine them all in one picture to get The best possible image, and none of it works with the RAW file. The standard RAW modes in third-party camera apps were also not able to work with all iPhone cameras.
That's why ProRAW is a good move from Apple that, despite what happens in the background, gives photographers control over white balance, noise control and more by storing computer photography inside the RAW format. This feature works with the front and all rear cameras on iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max.
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