From the course: Photos for macOS Big Sur and iPhone Essential Training

Working with ProRAW in Photos - Apple Photos Tutorial

From the course: Photos for macOS Big Sur and iPhone Essential Training

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Working with ProRAW in Photos

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- [Tutor] So what exactly is proRAW? This is something that Apple introduced with the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max. Let's take a look at it and see what's happening. I captured this image right here in proRAW mode on an Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max. And first of all, you see that is a DNG file. Let's explore this a bit more. So here we go. No editing. And this, actually, is part of what proRAW is, I'll explain in a second, but I want to go to info first. Let's just make sure that I know what I'm talking about here. All right. So here we go. Apple, iPhone 12 Pro Max raw badge there. So it's raw and it's proRAW because I have that turned on on the iPhone, but it's actually a DNG file which is a version of raw, an open source version of raw. Okay. So we're looking at a proRAW file. Why is this different than let's say a regular raw file? What Apple is trying to do with this approach is do a little bit of editing for you. In other words, give you a bit of a head start. The whole idea of raw is that the camera doesn't apply any adjustments or anything to the image. You get the batter, not the cake. Okay? What Apple says is, okay we want you to have the advantages of raw and let's go to edit mode and talk about those advantages which a lot of times is the ability to recover highlights, because there's more image information in the file to open up shadows, you know, make them a little brighter. Raw files can do this much more elegantly and gradually than JPEGs because there's more information in there. Okay, so they want to give you those advantages that you get from a raw file. I'm going to go ahead and reset this but they want to give you a better starting point because one of the problems with raw files is that when they first come up in your image editing app they can be kind of ugly because nothing has been done to them. So what Apple likes to do is do a little bit to them to give you a bit of a head start on the editing process and maybe not go, Oh my gosh, what did I do? I thought the iPhone took better pictures than that. It does, and proRAW, you know, kind of fulfills that promise that you get nice stuff with your iPhone without having to do anything other than point it and tap the button. So all proRAW is doing is giving you a head start on the editing process but still providing you with all the beautiful advantages of a raw file. Now one of the disadvantages of a raw file compared to the compressed formats is that they're bigger. Look at this, 32 megabytes just for the shot not 1.5 megabytes like you would get from one of the compressed formats or 2.5 or maybe even three megabytes, maybe four megabytes but not 32.4 megabytes. So you do pay a storage price with raw files. Okay, so you have to keep that in mind. That is the disadvantage right there. proRAW though takes care of what used to be the other disadvantage which is just having to start from scratch with making the file look good. They're giving you a nice headstart in that with proRAW. You know, now you can just fine tune but you still have that big file size. And that's something to keep in mind when you decide to capture in raw. I wouldn't set it as my default setting, but boy is it nice to have for shots like this, where you know you want to do some post-production work on them.

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