In Apple's September 2020 iPhone event, part of the keynote focused on a new camera feature called ProRAW. This feature was first available for the iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max and is Apple's solution to capturing images in RAW.

What Is ProRAW?

ProRAW is a software feature that allows iPhone users to shoot in RAW format. Apple describes ProRAW as combining the "information of a standard RAW format along with iPhone image processing."

The reason for the feature is to produce higher-quality images that "give you more flexibility when editing the exposure, color and white balance in your photo." Apple allows you to use HDR, Night Mode, and Deep Fusion at the same time as ProRAW, so you can get the best photo that you can.

RAW is the image format professional photographers use when taking photos. The file format preserves much more information about the image taken, creating a higher-quality image and offering more parts of an image for photographers to edit.

It's worth noting that because the image is preserving more information, it has a much larger file size. This means that it'll take up more storage on your iPhone.

iPhone photos have always been stored in JPEG format, which is a compressed image. When you compress the image, some of the less important information is deleted. The result still produces the image that you took, but it's lower quality than it could be.

If you're not quite sure about the differences between RAW and JPEG, we've explained that in another article.

Apple has included features to help you take better photos on your iPhone for a long time now, and the features keep getting better. Night Mode was a big step forward and Deep Fusion showed us what Apple's processing software could really do. ProRAW is another big leap forward for the iPhone camera.

How to Use ProRAW

If ProRAW sounds like a feature you want to use on your iPhone, you're probably wondering just how you do that. You won't find ProRAW as a button in the Camera app at first. It's a setting you need to turn on in the Settings app before you can use it.

To toggle on ProRAW:

  1. Head to the Settings app on your iPhone.
  2. Scroll down until you find Camera as an option.
  3. Once you've tapped on Camera, you'll want to find Formats.
  4. Under Photo Capture, you'll see the option for ProRAW; toggle it on.
Screenshot of the toggle to turn on ProRAW

Now, when you use the Camera app you'll see a button for RAW at the top of the app where you usually find the camera options.

Tap RAW to enable this option and take a photo with ProRAW. Tap it again to turn it off. You'll be able to tell if RAW is off as there will be a line through the button.

Screenshot showing the ProRAW button in the Camera app

When you take a photo with ProRAW, it will be saved in the RAW format. This means that on a computer it will have a .RAW file extension. To view or edit the image, you'll need to make sure you have software that supports this file format.

Does ProRAW Improve the Camera?

Technically, ProRAW doesn't improve the camera of the iPhone. Rather it improves how much information your image file has, which improves the quality.

There are often times when you'll only notice the improved quality of the RAW format when you zoom in on photos, sometimes to a pixel level.

You'll see the biggest benefit when it comes to editing the photo in third-party software. There are so many more elements that you control because of the extra information stored in the file.

There are plenty of camera comparisons on YouTube if that's the sort of thing you're interested in. Moment, Lee Zavitz, and Easton Chang have all released some very good videos showing the difference in photos taken in ProRAW vs normal.

Is ProRAW a Useful Feature?

ProRAW is definitely going to be a useful feature for iPhone photographers. Those who take photos regularly on their iPhone, and edit them for professional use will likely find the RAW file format really useful. They'll end up with a higher quality image as a result.

However, for the average iPhone user who isn't capturing photos for professional use, you probably won't find ProRAW all that useful. Your photos will take up more space, and you probably don't need the added benefits. But it's a great feature to have when you need it, and it's definitely a step forward for the future of iPhone photography.