Apple's iPhone 12 Pro Max has already proven to be one of the best cameras you can get on a phone. Adding ProRaw But it goes further, making this phone camera an even bigger rival to professional DSLRs. I'm a professional photographer and spent some time with ProRaw in beta on the 12 Pro Max before it was officially launched iOS 14.3. I photograph raw and all the time in my professional work Apple's ProRawEven in beta, I was able to work with pictures from my iPhone as well as pictures from my Pro DSLR. I am very impressed.
ProRaw is Apple's version of the raw files that professionals typically use on DSLRs. They are known as raw because, unlike JPEG images, they do not store information about color, sharpening, or other effects applied by the camera. They usually result in a more natural base image for post processing in software like Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop. ProRaw works in a similar way, but unlike DNG raw files that you can include in third-party apps, ProRaw uses Apple's computer photography for Deep Fusion HDR. The result is a better looking base image that is much more flexible in editing than JPEG images.
On paper, it's the perfect compromise, and in practice, this has worked for many of my paintings. Let's look at a few.
Let's start with this evening landscape captured in the standard JPEG. It's fine, but the shadows have been raised enough that much of the contrast and mood is gone and there is over-sharpening. In the blink of an eye it's fine, but it's not a good starting point for a more artistic edit.
Here is the same shot taken a few seconds later in ProRaw and then edited in Lightroom. I was able to keep those shadows darker, maintain the evening mood, while still having full control to correct the white balance and add much less sharpening to avoid messing up the fine details in the picture. I've edited it with a more capricious style that I really like - it may not be to everyone's taste, but it shows that these changes are possible on iPhone recordings.
And this is what happens when I copy the exact editing settings I made from the ProRaw image onto this JPEG. Obviously it didn't work.
A short time later, the sky erupted in an incredible sunset. I took it here in JPEG and while the picture looks decent enough the vivid sky looks a bit "burned in" and there is again a lot of sharpening in the picture which overall doesn't give me a good base image for a proper edit.
The ProRaw version gave me a lot more options to control the oscillation of the sky as well as all of the white balance and hues. I'm very happy with the outcome of this image and could only have gotten to this point if I'd shot raw via JPEG. Editing the shot took about 15 minutes in Lightroom, however, so this isn't the fastest way to work.
The ProRaw file without a camera doesn't always look good and will likely look a lot worse than the JPEG version. Just like raw files, ProRaw files must be manipulated and processed by a DSLR before they look their best.
Take this unprocessed ProRaw file, for example, which I imported into Lightroom and then exported as a JPEG without editing. It looks way too dark.
But after spending some time in Lightroom, I was able to bring all of these details back while maintaining the bright sky. It gave me a great base image to adjust the color tones to get the finished shot you see here, and it's a shot that I'm really happy with. It's certainly a big change from the pristine raw version.
Note, however, that I was using ProRaw in beta and haven't updated Adobe Lightroom to properly support the files. I have found that ProRaw files that look good in Photo Gallery suddenly appear too dark or sometimes too light when opened in Lightroom as well as some other editing apps like Snapseed. It's hard to say why that is exactly, but it means that I had to work a little harder to get the image back to a "good" place before starting to be more creative with editing. However, the information was captured so I was able to cancel out the shadows as well in this example.
Some of you reading this may not like spending that much time editing a single image, but spending that time is a common practice in professional photography to ensure that an image comes out absolutely perfect. I often spend half an hour or more on a single landscape painting, and my product and car photos can take hours of work. It's a slower process, but the resulting quality is much higher.
Here's another example before and after. On the left is the unprocessed ProRaw file. On the right I edited it in Lightroom. The file had plenty of wiggle room to lift the shadows while controlling the extremely bright sky. I also used position adjustment brushes to "paint" light on some leaves to make them stand out better in the scene, and I've tweaked the color balance throughout. This is exactly how I would process the image with a raw file from a Canon 5DMkIV DSLR, and I am very impressed with how this final image looks.
While you've been able to ingest in regular DNG raw data via third-party apps for a while, these don't use Apple's HDR blend. So it was difficult to even out such lights and shadows. Working with ProRaw was noticeably easier.
It's not always about big, transformative changes. This shot involved darkening the scene to capture more of the capricious sky and enhancing this beautiful rainbow.
While this shot only required a bit of shadow lift and tint, and some darkening of the sky, it doesn't look much different from the original.
ProRaw also works with Night Mode - another advantage over regular Raw in a third-party app that can't use Night Mode. Here I benefited from the bright shots that the night mode can capture in the dark, but I still had full control over white balance and hue while also having more precise control over the lights and shadows. Original ProRaw is on the left, my edited version on the right.
I was able to bring out more shadow detail in this night image.
While in this scene you can lift the shadows and control the bright lights of the Christmas lights.
Should you be using Apple ProRaw?
Whether or not you should use it yourself depends a lot on the style of your photography. If you're more interested in quickly sharing those moments with family and friends, then you should probably stick with JPEG. ProRaw recordings require editing to get the most out of it, just like any other raw file. Also, keep in mind that ProRaw files are many times larger than JPEGs (around 3.5MB for JPEG versus around 18MB for ProRaw) so just recording in raw form will fill your memory quickly.
However, if you want to make your photography more artistic and want to make sure you have full control over the image for accurate post-production in apps like Lightroom, then you should definitely give it a try.
I use polarizers and neutral density filters on my DSLR when I'm taking landscape shots, I set up my tripod exactly on site for my landscapes, and I love spending hours in Lightroom tweaking shots until I'm happy. So I'm used to taking a picture longer. For me, it's about getting the perfect shot from start to finish, and with ProRaw I can do just that with footage from my iPhone, resulting in images that look better than their JPEG or standard raw data.
It's still early on, though, and while I've noticed some beta issues with how the images are displayed in Lightroom, I'm curious to see how they improve and how ProRaw can help me get even better pictures from my phone.
Continue reading: The iPhone 12 Pro's cameras have some new tricks that serious photographers will love