Sunday, October 2, 2016

RAW Photo Capture in iOS 10

I was excited to learn that iOS 10 supports RAW photo capture according to the Apple Developer iOS 10.0 prerelease notes where under the "Core Image" section it states, "RAW image file support is now available on iOS devices that use the A8 or A9 CPU"--hooray for my iPhone 6 Plus which has an A8 chip!  However, I was later disappointed to learn that RAW photo capture would not be available on my iPhone 6 Plus according to Table 3-1 in the Apple Developer iOS Device Camera Summary.  Only the iPad Pro, iPhone SE, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and later models would support RAW photo capture.  Wah.

Nevertheless, I am pleased to hear that many 3rd party iOS developers have already introduced RAW photo capture into their apps. Lightroom, 500px, and ProCam are a few examples. While they all tout editing features and RAW workflow within their mobile apps and the ability to export edited images in JPG format, I have not found any explicit language that the RAW DNG files could also be exported (eg, synchronized to the Apple Photos application and/or exported directly to the Mac operating system Finder).

Why am I interested in the ability to export the RAW files?  First, I prefer not to process my RAW images on a mobile device. Not only are mobile screens are smaller and less convenient for editing in general, there are times when I need to magnify an image to 1:1 such as to verify that the right amount of noise reduction had been applied, so there are significant advantages to using large monitors for RAW editing workflows.  Second, I use other desktop applications for photo stitching or HDR processing of my RAW files, and those apps might not be available on mobile devices, at least not yet.  Third, I simply want to archive my original RAW files so I have the option to later go back and apply more edits, using any software application that fits the job (which will usually be a desktop application).

So... does anyone have a RAW-compatible iOS 10 device, and could you tell me if you are able to use a 3rd party app to export the native DNG files to your computer?

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