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by nomel 1237 days ago
You can use the camera app. It’s all in the settings menu for Pro models: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/take-apple-proraw-pho...

This is a “there’s already a solution, but the average consumer wouldn’t know about it, because the defaults are made for them” type of problem.

One could claim that it's a UI problem, and should be exposed in the Camera app. This may be true, but the files are 10 to 12 times larger, with a real "quality hit", as perceived by the average user, for overall aesthetics. I personally think it should be in the settings menu. It's not something you would want enabled without understanding and intent.

It’s a little frustrating that apple added this feature, for this exact kind of thing, and they’re, inadvertently or not, getting a little dumped on, do to lack of knowledge/research.

These features (Google also attempted to standardize it, not sure they succeeded) were a big deal in the photography world.

1 comments

Sorry, I do not have an iPhone. How easy is the 'RAW' feature to find?

I understand what you mean about most users do not need such a feature. But while supporting computers I am surprise how many features of programs users do not know exist not just because they do not use them but also how hard it is to get at some features.

Personally, I seen too many programs where you need to know to turn OFF certain functions before you can enable some other feature. The users often never see what they needed because it is so hard to enable that feature without know they need to turn something else OFF.

To find the RAW feature you need to do two things:

Go to Settings -> Camera -> toggle Apple ProRAW on

Then in the Camera app there will be a "RAW" button that you can tap on to enable RAW capture

Third party camera apps like Halide (https://halide.cam) focus on just using the RAW capabilities by default

+1 for Halide, which I didn't know about. Apple doesn't give non-Pro 13s access to RAW images (that I know of), but Halide does out of the box. The camera AI was driving me crazy on my 13mini; now I have a solution. Are there other similar apps of similar quality? In particular, I'd love an excellent BW app which is (at least relatively) AI-free.
The iPhone RAW mode still does quite heavy processing though.

Here’s a comparison I just made between the iPhone camera’s RAW and default modes, and Halide: https://i.ibb.co/XFMJVjz/9-DD734-F7-CA00-4-E53-85-C7-283315-...