Apple really went all out for iPhone 12 Pro’s camera tech this year, and perhaps the most attractive feature is a new photo format called Apple ProRaw.
Coming to the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max “later this year”, is the ProRaw features which will offer the flexibility of raw editing along with great camera performance for high-quality photography on the smartphone. But what exactly is ProRaw and how does it work? Here’s what we know about one of the most anticipated features of the iPhone 12 Pro lineup this year.
What is Apple ProRaw?
The ProRaw feature, in a nutshell, will capture RAW images with some image processing that includes combining frames from several shots captured by the cameras on the iPhone 12 Pro models using Apple’s Deep Fusion and Smart HDR tech, or applying noise reduction.
However, It will still leave some room for editing things like color, exposure, and contrast in the same depth that can be had with the RAW format. ProRAW helps to sort out things like white balance and using Smart HDR 3 to pick out details and texture in RAW shots.
Doing this avoids the intimidating process of editing RAW photos from scratch for beginners since RAW images can be a challenge to work with. So, Apple’s ProRAW will take care of the difficult parts of getting an image ready for more refined editing.
How does the iPhone 12 Pro ProRaw work
After snapping a RAW photo on either a smartphone or DSLR, the device captures a fully uncompressed image. These files are normally a lot larger than the standard JPEG photos many DSLRs and smartphones capture by default.
These uncompressed images are much bigger in file size due to a lot more image data, meaning there is a lot more room to edit them after shooting. Professional photographers tend to shoot in the RAW format so they can manipulate the photos using photo editing software to process them into images that are suitable for viewing in a digital or physical format.
However, shooting in RAW means all the computational photography smartphones apply to camera shots are not applied to the captured image. So, to get features like advanced HDR photo processing, users need to shoot in a processed image format, like JPEG, and thus lose out on the ability to deeply manipulate images in editing software.
Apple’s ProRaw, as mentioned during the launch, won’t be available in iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max at the time of launch but will surely be coming later this year.
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Why is ProRaw only available on the iPhone 12 Pro models? ProRaw should be able to work on al the iPhones released over the past couple of years. Seems to be a way to push people to buy a more expensive phone.