When Apple introduced the iPhone 12 Professional, it launched a robust new digicam function: ProRAW. This function is obtainable now for all Professional and Professional Max fashions, beginning with the 12 sequence and newer, and in the event you’re choosy about your photograph processing, it’s undoubtedly a function price testing. ProRAW combines the advantages of computational images with conventional RAW picture seize — form of the perfect of each worlds.

So why would you wish to use ProRAW within the first place? Let’s return to digital images faculty. A conventional RAW picture file preserves much more of the knowledge that’s captured while you take a photograph. Often, your iPhone’s digicam will course of that information right into a HEIF or JPEG picture, throwing away the additional information and basically “baking in” issues like white stability, publicity, and element in shadows and highlights. It’s a smaller, extra manageable file, but it surely’s not as versatile for post-processing. A RAW picture retains extra of that unique data and supplies much more flexibility for photograph modifying. 

Taking pictures RAW pictures on a standard digicam is usually most popular if you wish to get the very most out of your pictures, but it surely’s not fairly the identical story on a telephone digicam. That’s as a result of a standard RAW file is only one body, and it misses out on computational images advantages like multi-frame processing. A smartphone digicam JPEG picture is likely to be much less versatile, however it will probably embody extra element and fewer noise than a smartphone photograph processed from a RAW picture that didn’t profit from these computational strategies.

Enter ProRAW. A ProRAW picture combines all these advantages into one file. Multi-frame processing is utilized, and the ultimate picture that’s saved preserves rather more data than an ordinary iPhone JPEG. 

It’s nice if you wish to course of your individual photographs moderately than go away it as much as your telephone, however there’s a draw back: a lot larger picture recordsdata. Excessive-res ProRAW recordsdata common round 75MB in comparison with round 3 or 4MB for the standard JPEG. Which means about 14 ProRAW recordsdata will add as much as round 1GB, so it wouldn’t take lengthy to replenish your telephone storage with huge picture recordsdata. 

That thought of, ProRAW is a robust instrument to make use of in particular conditions — you simply must know allow it in your telephone. Right here’s do it. (I adopted these steps on an iPhone 14 Professional operating iOS 16.3.1.)

As soon as ProRAW is enabled, it’s essential flip it on within the Digicam app. There are two methods to go about this:

You need to use 12-megapixel ProRAW with any of your iPhone’s cameras, together with the selfie cam, although 48-megapixel mode will clearly solely work with the 14 Professional’s essential digicam. ProRAW isn’t appropriate with portrait mode, both.

Your ProRAW recordsdata can be recorded as DNG recordsdata, which might be edited proper in your telephone or within the photograph software program of your alternative, the place you’ll be able to bask within the glory of all these pixels. Simply bear in mind to toggle ProRAW off while you’re accomplished for the sake of your machine’s storage.