When Apple introduced the ProRAW photo format last year with the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max, it was a great melding of computational photography and higher-quality original image capture. You can get many of the benefits of raw files—larger dynamic range, more editing malleability—with the photo-blending features the iPhone uses on non-raw images, where the camera captures several shots and merges them together for a better photo overall. (We talked about this in episode 83 of the PhotoActive podcast.)
One of the first apps to support ProRAW was RAW Power by Gentlemen Coders. I wrote about the iOS version for DPReview a few years ago, and RAW Power remains one of the best apps on macOS or iOS/iPadOS for adjusting raw files in ways most other editors don’t. In fact, the Local Tone Mapping control in RAW Power is something that not even Apple’s own Photos app includes.
TidBITS has just published a new article by me that’s all about RAW Power 3. If nothing else, it’s a great primer on raw formats, their advantages, and why they take more specialized tools to work with. The latest version of RAW Power, 3.3, also adds a lot of great stuff, including support for raw formats that are still not supported by Apple’s system-level raw camera libraries. If you’ve ever shot in Fujifilm’s compressed raw formats, this will be especially welcome news, for instance.
Read the article here: Editing RAW and ProRAW Photos Using RAW Power 3.
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Jeff Carlson | Never Enough Coffee Creations 