iPhone 16 Pro Max Shooting in RAW Questions

[kat.hayes]

I want to start shooting in RAW on a new iPhone 16 Pro Max that I am still waiting to be delivered. I will likely not be doing lots of editing on the phone, though it would be nice to occasionally be able to do edit a RAW photo in either the Photos app or in Lightroom Mobile.

1. If I want to be able to achieve the best visual quality and be able to edit in either Photos or Lightroom, is there a reason to shoot in a 3rd party camera app VS. the native camera app?

2. If I shoot in the native camera app in the RAW format, are there any issues with being able to later import these RAW files into Lightroom Classic on a Mac?

3. Are there any actual new benefits to shooting in RAW on a new 16 Pro Max vs. prior models?

Thanks

 

[cateye]

1. Using a third party camera may gave you more options to directly control how the photo is taken and allow you to side-step more of the onboard processing that the built-in camera App applies (shooting RAW removes most, but not all, of these algorithmic changes when using the built-in camera app). It's up to you if you want to change your whole workflow and photo-taking process in one swoop or just start shooting in RAW and discover what opportunities and differences that creates within the Camera app you're already familiar with.

2. No issues. Apple being Apple they always have to give everything a stupid name, but "ProRAW" images are just DNG files, which is an established standard. Lightroom Classic will read them just fine.

3. I haven't upgraded to a 16 yet, so I can't answer this definitively. So far as I know, no, there are no additional differences, but I'd see what other people say.

 

[chown33]

There are a couple of threads about shooting in RAW or ProRAW on iPhone 16 models:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/issues-with-proraw-48-and-stock-camera-app.2437958/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/night-mode-with-proraw-gives-grey-images.2437855/

The "Photos taken with iPhone 16" thread also has some discussion of 3rd party camera apps vs the stock Apple Camera app, and raw vs. other formats.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/photos-taken-with-iphone-16-pro-pro-max-worldwide-2024-2025.2437160/

My search term: raw