[Software] ProRaw: I tested Apple's new iOS 14.3 trick and my iPhone 12 photos look amazing

[Sxynix]

With the release of iOS 14.3, the iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max get Apple's new raw photo format called ProRaw. The new file lets you have the customization of a raw file built atop the iPhone's computational photo smarts. For the past few weeks, I've been testing out the new feature and I'm impressed at how ProRaw transformed my phone photography. ProRaw is as significant a camera addition as the faster aperture lens Apple added to the main cameras on the iPhone 12 family and the new sensor-based stabilization found on the iPhone 12 Pro Max.

Read more: iOS 14.3: These are 16 iPhone features you'll use every day

ProRaw works on all four iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max cameras. It uses the widely supported Adobe Digital Negative, or DNG, file format and contains information for 12-bit color and support for 14 stops of dynamic range. The approach Apple took with ProRaw is similar to how Google saves raw files built from HDR Plus on Pixel phones. ProRaw files are created from multiple image frames and contain the data from the best parts of those photos. Deep Fusion analyzes those images pixel by pixel to create a deep photo file. The A14 Bionic does all of this analysis in real time without causing shutter lag.

There are several notable differences between taking a raw photo on an iPhone and a ProRaw photo. The first is that you can only take raw photos using a third-party app like Halide or Moment. ProRaw photos can be taken using the default Camera app. Next, ProRaw files are large. For example, I took a photo of the same subject using each file format on the iPhone 12 Pro Max. The HEIC file was 5.2 megabytes, the JPEG was 6.8MB, the raw photo (taken with the Moment app) was 16.5MB and the ProRaw photo was a whopping 34.7MB.

ProRaw's larger file size contains much more image data compared to a standard raw file. A ProRaw file is built on a foundation of computational photography from Smart HDR, Deep Fusion and Night Mode, which can result in a picture with significantly less image noise, better dynamic range and sharper detail and textures.

Below are two JPEG files I made, one from a ProRaw photo and another from a raw file taken with the Moment app. On both, I adjusted only the white balance, highlights and shadows. If you look at the photo made from the raw version, you can see lots of color image noise on the bricks of the building and most conspicuously in the dark night sky. The photo made from the ProRaw version hardly has any image noise because of the Night Mode processing the iPhone 12 Pro Max did when I took the photo.