Ayup! For many years now, I’ve thought of Apple ProRAW as pointless. A mere gimmick to help attract professional photographers. Yes, it churns out the infamous file sizes we all know and love. But I always found you could do just as much with a good old JPG.
As is often the case, I was wrong. So very wrong. Especially when it comes to the latest range of iPhones. I touched upon the unfathomable HDR settings. That was followed by a quest to achieve more natural-looking photos. And now I’ve 100% changed my mind about shooting JPG.
Some people love Apple’s processing. Nothing wrong with that. But personally, I want my iPhone photos to feel like they came out of a mirrorless camera — not a phone. That’s why I always shoot in ProRAW.
Why ProRAW?
I’ve mentioned in several blog posts that I love the convenience of JPG. Paired with a photographic style, you can easily achieve solid results. That said, they could always be better. Convenience is often counteracted with sacrifice.
So long, JPG. Hello (again), ProRAW…
Fight Overprocessing
ProRAW files remain processed, but way less so. Additionally, they still come with my new arch-enemy baked in: HDR. With Photomator or Pixelmator Pro, this can be removed easily, though. Both have a dedicated HDR switch. Winner!
Once that BS is out of the equation, you’re left with a highly workable file. The difference is increasingly noticeable as more and more over-sharpening is added to JPGs and HEIFs.
Apple ProRAW combines the information of a standard RAW format along with iPhone image processing, which gives you more flexibility when editing the exposure, colour and white balance in your photo.
Highest Possible Quality
If you want the absolute best quality from your iPhone camera, ProRAW is one solution. Plenty of photographers also prefer Bayer RAW. This pure format eliminates all of Apple’s computational voodoo. It requires a third-party app, which is why I’m more than happy sticking with ProRAW. I’m all about the stock camera app.
ProRAW files are up to 12 times larger than JPG or HEIF. These bad boys will quickly fill up your phone or iCloud allowance. Personally, I’ve been trying to use this to my advantage.
Instead, I’m purposely shooting less. Intentional, considered and mindful. It’s almost a bit like shooting on film. Maybe not that extreme, but you know what I mean.
For experienced photographers, Apple ProRAW bridges the convenience of computational photography with the creative flexibility of manual editing. It’s particularly beneficial for capturing challenging scenes, such as high-contrast landscapes or low-light environments, and offers a level of control that rivals dedicated cameras.
A Better Editing Experience
It won’t come as any surprise that RAW and ProRAW files give you more flexibility in post. Again, I wasn’t convinced that the latter had any benefits until recently. My at-home macro experiments were all shot in ProRAW. Ultimately, that’s what made me reconsider my hasty dismissal.
It’s not even close any more. The difference is night and day. Load your files into your editing app of choice, and the possibilities are endless compared to JPG.
The resulting file is a DNG of sorts, but it’s a “processed” DNG. If you enable the option in your camera preferences, this DNG file will also have an expanded resolution of 48 megapixels. This is the option I use most often because it does an excellent job of balancing what’s required to get me to a strong starting point when I begin my edits.
Beneficial For Black & White
Since switching to ProRAW for most of my other shots, I remembered something: black and white photography becomes infinitely better when you initially shoot in colour. With more control over how individual colours appear in monochrome, it’s much easier to get a dark and moody vibe. Or, basically, whichever look you’re after.
With the additional quality and image data to play around with, way more can be achieved than with a JPG or HEIF. As I primarily work in black and white, the opportunities this opens up are really rather exciting.
Format & Size
Lastly, just a quick note on the format and image size I’m using: 48 MP with my ProRAW pipeline set to JPG-XL Lossless. These files aren’t quite as huge as JPG Lossless, but way bigger than JPG-XL Lossy.
I did a quick comparison using all three options. As you’ll see, there’s quite a difference between the smallest and the biggest. This was simply a random photo using 48 MP:
- JPG Lossless – 63.5 MB
- JPG-XL Lossless – 42.9 MB
- JPG-XL Lossy – 16.2 MB
JPEG XL offers significantly better image quality and compression ratios than legacy JPEG. It is designed for computationally efficient encoding and decoding using software implementations without the need for additional hardware acceleration, even on mobile devices.
Better iPhone Photos
It’s taken a few weeks of trial and error, but my goodness. This is it! From how I shoot to how I edit, it’s all had a complete overhaul. ProRAW will bring out significantly better results from an iPhone camera. Turns out it’s not completely pointless after all.
The primary goal of this exercise was to try and achieve natural-looking images. Still plenty of room for improvement and experimentation, but shooting RAW or ProRAW seems the obvious solution. On with further testing…