ProRaw Images: Apple’s Photography Magic

Apple iPhones always proved to be one of the best Camera Smartphones in the industry. The Incredible sensor and the image processing algorithms makes every image much more stunning in every lighting condition. But sometimes we need RAW photographs. A Raw image is an unprocessed form of the image that is generally used by photographers to obtain maximum possible details in the image and then process it after applying their creative editing.

Apple ProRaw is an extension of this Raw image format. Up until now, the iPhone native camera app didn’t support RAW images. You had to use third-party apps like the moment to obtain RAW images. But now you can get ProRaw from the native Camera app. ProRaw provides you an image with the same information and details as a RAW image with better quality. It uses its deep fusion technology to make image a little more detailed and uses 12-bit color for better color shades.

Normal HEIC images support 8-bit color and offer 256 color shades but ProRaw supports 12-bit meaning 4096 shades of color. Resulting in far more nuanced shades compared to lossy formats like HEIC. The ProRaw images aren’t processed like general iPhone images. There is much more creative control for Photographers with ProRaw images compared to any other formats. Many Professional Photographers say that ProRaw is a game-changer for photography with iPhones.

But sadly only iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max support ProRaw images. If you are not a pro photographer then don’t use ProRaw it is typically 10 to 12 times larger in size than normal iPhone images. You will also need to convert the ProRaw to JPG or HEIC before sharing to Social Media Platforms. To know how to use it check out the apple support article.