Other ProRAW - remove "Pro" and "RAW" from the name, please

[nunolikeapple]

I tested 10 photos i didn’t find any difference between Most compatible and JPEG-XL .
Didn’t find any difference either if i take the picture from Lock Screen or Home Screen:/

 

[nunolikeapple]

Update 2: Since iOS 18.1 update, my photos have now even better details in ProCam app. At 100%.
I think someone mentioned that too.
In the Native app, everything is the same. As i said before.

 

[ToddH]

Good afternoon Excellent post. A question, have you noticed that the percentage of the battery decreases rapidly when using the camera?. In my specific case, with each photo/two photos, the battery decreases by 1%. Thank you for your kindness

So far, I have not seen that issue with the battery dropping like that when the camera is in use. Are you using the 16 Pro or Pro Max? Maybe you can do a hard reset on your phone and see if that clears up any discrepancies. hopefully somebody else will chime in to see if they have that issue as well, but as for me, I would say no.

 

[nunolikeapple]

I did not notice any battery impact taking pictures.

 

[Gcerdan]

Thank you both very much for your replies. I have an iphone 16 pro max. I have already done a full reset and the problem persists. Once again, thank you, it is a pleasure to find people like you two on the forums.

 

[ToddH]

Update 2: Since iOS 18.1 update, my photos have now even better details in ProCam app. At 100%.
I think someone mentioned that too.
In the Native app, everything is the same. As i said before.

That’s cool!! I think the iPhone default camera issues you still have is possibly due to a focusing issue. I’ve used the ProCamera by Moment (Moment app) in manual focus mode and focused manually with peeking on & the image was nearly perfect. So, the iPhone must have a phasing or contrast issue when focusing. This is what I found before my restore and iOS 18.1 update. Just wanted to see if you can test your camera manually like this.

 

[al404]

Also the dynamic range of the ProRAW files is very poor which greatly limits how much shadow/highlight data that can be recovered from the RAW file.

Since sensor is so tiny phone manufacture need to workaround low dynamic range and it seems to me that ProRAW has tone of DR. As I do with regular camera I may under expose to preserve hi lights.

Image stacking is the only workaround to reduce noise, increase clarity and DR.
The other option pixel binning.

I can agree on too much clarity often presente in RAW but if I edit them from iPhone I can lower it after shooting

 

[jajo.j]

Since sensor is so tiny phone manufacture need to workaround low dynamic range and it seems to me that ProRAW has tone of DR. As I do with regular camera I may under expose to preserve hi lights.

Image stacking is the only workaround to reduce noise, increase clarity and DR.
The other option pixel binning.

I can agree on too much clarity often presente in RAW but if I edit them from iPhone I can lower it after shooting

ProRAW are stacked (the exact number of frames can be seen in the phone logs but usually around 7 in daylight and slightly less in low light).

I also try to reduce exposure when i shoot ProRAW 48 since shadows are easier to boost than reducing highlights.

Regular RAW provides the absolute best dynamic range from a single non-stacked frame.

 

[al404]

Regular RAW provides the absolute best dynamic range from a single non-stacked frame.

Are you sure? sound strange to me

Stacking multiple RAW usually reduce noise and may increase dynamic range
I can't see how a single RAW can have a better DR of a stacked one

 

[ToddH]

Are you sure? sound strange to me

Stacking multiple RAW usually reduce noise and may increase dynamic range
I can't see how a single RAW can have a better DR of a stacked one

Check out the Even Longer app. Awesome dynamic range with stacked photos. Here is a perfect example. I exposed for the highlights and raised shadows in Lightroom mobile

Not the exact same photo, but taken the same time. I couldn’t find the original dark file form even longer, but this one just has a tree in the shot.

 

[ToddH]

Today I went out and took more photos. I noticed that my iPhone camera started acting stupid again. Heavy pixelated images as before. Seems to be a focusing issue; but after I shut my iPhone off for 10 minutes or so, After power up, the image quality was good again (mostly). Weird! I can use the Moment app with manual focus & the image is clean…

A couple of shots of the same image with different distances. The pine tree I found had a split in it, so I decided to light it up! Using my Viltrox 8X retro led light and dialed in a -2 ev for the ambient light.

 

[uacd]

I also prefer noise over denoise.
Raw in iPhone was flawed back before the introduction of ProRAW. Apple’s implementation of regular RAW is very bad, to the point it made people believe mantra that “RAW images never look good, you gotta edit them to get good results”. Like, really? Somehow I had been shooting RAW with my D3100 (now retired, can’t find new og battery for it) and these files looked GORGEOUS and indistinguishable from JPEG output in terms of color rendition, saturation and exposure. WYSIWYG all the way. And iPhone doesn’t provide that, I am not getting what I actually see thru the display-viewfinder.

Every time I try raw on iPhone I always get blown out sky, muted colors and trashed shadow detail. Turns out iPhone automatically cranks the “boost” parameter (which is sort of some kind of highlight exposure) which is responsible for blown up sky, as well as automatically applies noise reduction.

Btw, noise reduction. They do it purely out of marketing reasons. They want users to be stupid and never understand that 4x resolution with that sensor size means 4x noise, to cover it up they do not allow true RAW 48mp stills and apply heavy NR to ProRAW shots. I never understood whats so “Pro” about it if it only can change exposure and white balance. Noise is a major part of image details, you cannot just remove it and retain natural sharpness.

Apple’s RAW doesn’t give me same freedom Apple’s JPEG gave me back in the days of iPhone 5 when they applied only slightest noise reduction and algorithm was completely different. I often find myself in situations when I can do nothing with the watercolors my iPhone produces.

Apple needs to sit back and rethink what is photography: a heavily AI edited imagery or pure, natural colors and lots of creative choice for professionals. They have changed their image space to DCI P3 but I haven’t seen any advantage, colors in RAW now look much more muted than when those were sRGB JPEGs, I have to constantly turn up saturation and contrast to compensate

 

[jajo.j]

I also prefer noise over denoise.
Raw in iPhone was flawed back before the introduction of ProRAW. Apple’s implementation of regular RAW is very bad, to the point it made people believe mantra that “RAW images never look good, you gotta edit them to get good results”. Like, really? Somehow I had been shooting RAW with my D3100 (now retired, can’t find new og battery for it) and these files looked GORGEOUS and indistinguishable from JPEG output in terms of color rendition, saturation and exposure. WYSIWYG all the way. And iPhone doesn’t provide that, I am not getting what I actually see thru the display-viewfinder.

Every time I try raw on iPhone I always get blown out sky, muted colors and trashed shadow detail. Turns out iPhone automatically cranks the “boost” parameter (which is sort of some kind of highlight exposure) which is responsible for blown up sky, as well as automatically applies noise reduction.

Btw, noise reduction. They do it purely out of marketing reasons. They want users to be stupid and never understand that 4x resolution with that sensor size means 4x noise, to cover it up they do not allow true RAW 48mp stills and apply heavy NR to ProRAW shots. I never understood whats so “Pro” about it if it only can change exposure and white balance. Noise is a major part of image details, you cannot just remove it and retain natural sharpness.

Apple’s RAW doesn’t give me same freedom Apple’s JPEG gave me back in the days of iPhone 5 when they applied only slightest noise reduction and algorithm was completely different. I often find myself in situations when I can do nothing with the watercolors my iPhone produces.

Apple needs to sit back and rethink what is photography: a heavily AI edited imagery or pure, natural colors and lots of creative choice for professionals. They have changed their image space to DCI P3 but I haven’t seen any advantage, colors in RAW now look much more muted than when those were sRGB JPEGs, I have to constantly turn up saturation and contrast to compensate

I agree about your points regarding ProRAW but not Regular RAW. To be clear - Apple does not support regular RAW in their own camera software. The only way to shoot in regular RAW is to use a third party app. Apple only provides RAW data from the sensor and it is up to the app that takes the photo to associate the RAW file with a proper profile to make it more "point and shoot" ready.

Most third party apps will associate the file with Adobe RGB profile which gives blown out sky. The highlights are very easy to rescue though - just pull down the highlights parameter. As long as you carefully expose the image correctly when you shoot it.

For me the regular RAW with iPhone is fantastic. It has no denoise whatsoever and lots of detail. I can edit them myself to exactly how I want them to be. It takes a little time for sure but it is worth it.

I very much prefer iPhone regular RAWs over any other phone I have tested. Comparing with DSLR is a bit unfair as their sensors have a much greater dynamic range.

My only wish right now is that Apple would also allow unbinned 48MP regular RAW. Then I'd be in heaven.