- Joined
- Apr 16, 2025
Did you ever notice how fake your photos look? Skin tone is orange, trees look unnatural and pics taken in the dark look like oil paintings. This is because the phone uses postprocessing to butcher them. You never asked for this, but here we are. The worst offenders are excessive sharpening and noise removal. RAW files are UNPROCESSED, which means none of those automated adjustments are added. They also have a higher dynamic range than regular JPGs and that lets you adjust brightness, contrast, saturation etc. a lot more accurately.
First, check if your phone is on this list. If not, maybe this post will encourage you to get one of those. I'll use my Galaxy S21 Ultra as an example for everything from now on. I know nothing about Apple phones, so I can't help you with those. S21U's default camera app has two modes for shooting:
- PHOTO (90% automated): supports only basic exposure and focus adjustments, can't shoot RAW.
- PRO: the real deal. Lets you manually set ISO, shutter speed, and shoot RAW.
Go to Camera Settings - Advanced Picture Options and enable "RAW Copies". Now whenever you take a picture in PRO mode, it will save two files: .JPG and .DNG. The latter stands for Digital Negative, which is one of the most popular RAW formats. Those files are much bigger than JPGs because of all the extra data.
Now you need software to edit it. I use Photoshop with Camera RAW plugin, which can be downloaded or updated separately. I will only talk about features I use the most because I don't want this post to be too long.
I'll start with an example to showcase how RAW is a real game changer. The picture was shot on a tripod with 4 sec. exposure and ISO 320.
- Regular JPG (yeah, that's what it actually looks like) [att. 1]
- Same JPG with midtones set to 5 (turned waaaay up) [att. 2]
- DNG loaded in Adobe Camera RAW (before adjustments) [att. 3]
- JPG export of the DNG with only one adjustment: exposure set to 3.20 [att. 4]
That's right. Your eyes may be too lame to see in the dark, but this isn't the case with your phone. Sure it's noisy, but it's unavoidable. You can mitigate this to an extent. More on that below.
Another thing RAW is good for is filtering out harsh colored lighting - see [att. 5] and [att. 6].
Here's a few words about some of the most useful settings.
LIGHT: I mostly adjust highlights and shadows, then contrast and sometimes exposure. I seldom touch whites and blacks because it makes non-artsy pics look a bit unnatural.
COLOR: increase temperature if you want to make everything look more yellow/orange. Good for pictures taken in places with white/blue LEDs. Vibrance is probably best described as weaker saturation, so go with that first.
COLOR MIXER: good for adjusting specific colors. Just set a slider to +100 to see which parts of the image are affected. It's pretty self-explanatory.
DETAIL: I usually don't touch those, but you might want to increase luminance noise reduction a bit if you don't want those night shots to look too grainy. Keep in mind that this is one of those settings that make regular JPGs with no manual adjustments look like garbage.
Another useful feature of Camera RAW is the ability to merge multiple DNGs to a panorama. You can edit and export the whole thing without switching to basic Photoshop. Just import a bunch of vertical images you took with locked exposure, ISO, and focus, right click and select "Merge to Panorama...". Then press "Merge" again (there's usually no need to change anything on this screen), save the temporary DNG to disk and make adjustments as usual. [pano 1]
Make sure you crop out the transparent parts. [pano 2]
To save/export, right click the miniature in Camera RAW and pick Save Image - Save Image..., then pick JPG and maximum quality. Forget about PNG, who gives a fuck? This isn't pixel art.
That's it for now. Have fun!
First, check if your phone is on this list. If not, maybe this post will encourage you to get one of those. I'll use my Galaxy S21 Ultra as an example for everything from now on. I know nothing about Apple phones, so I can't help you with those. S21U's default camera app has two modes for shooting:
- PHOTO (90% automated): supports only basic exposure and focus adjustments, can't shoot RAW.
- PRO: the real deal. Lets you manually set ISO, shutter speed, and shoot RAW.
Go to Camera Settings - Advanced Picture Options and enable "RAW Copies". Now whenever you take a picture in PRO mode, it will save two files: .JPG and .DNG. The latter stands for Digital Negative, which is one of the most popular RAW formats. Those files are much bigger than JPGs because of all the extra data.
Now you need software to edit it. I use Photoshop with Camera RAW plugin, which can be downloaded or updated separately. I will only talk about features I use the most because I don't want this post to be too long.
I'll start with an example to showcase how RAW is a real game changer. The picture was shot on a tripod with 4 sec. exposure and ISO 320.
- Regular JPG (yeah, that's what it actually looks like) [att. 1]
- Same JPG with midtones set to 5 (turned waaaay up) [att. 2]
- DNG loaded in Adobe Camera RAW (before adjustments) [att. 3]
- JPG export of the DNG with only one adjustment: exposure set to 3.20 [att. 4]
That's right. Your eyes may be too lame to see in the dark, but this isn't the case with your phone. Sure it's noisy, but it's unavoidable. You can mitigate this to an extent. More on that below.
Another thing RAW is good for is filtering out harsh colored lighting - see [att. 5] and [att. 6].
Here's a few words about some of the most useful settings.
LIGHT: I mostly adjust highlights and shadows, then contrast and sometimes exposure. I seldom touch whites and blacks because it makes non-artsy pics look a bit unnatural.
COLOR: increase temperature if you want to make everything look more yellow/orange. Good for pictures taken in places with white/blue LEDs. Vibrance is probably best described as weaker saturation, so go with that first.
COLOR MIXER: good for adjusting specific colors. Just set a slider to +100 to see which parts of the image are affected. It's pretty self-explanatory.
DETAIL: I usually don't touch those, but you might want to increase luminance noise reduction a bit if you don't want those night shots to look too grainy. Keep in mind that this is one of those settings that make regular JPGs with no manual adjustments look like garbage.
Another useful feature of Camera RAW is the ability to merge multiple DNGs to a panorama. You can edit and export the whole thing without switching to basic Photoshop. Just import a bunch of vertical images you took with locked exposure, ISO, and focus, right click and select "Merge to Panorama...". Then press "Merge" again (there's usually no need to change anything on this screen), save the temporary DNG to disk and make adjustments as usual. [pano 1]
Make sure you crop out the transparent parts. [pano 2]
To save/export, right click the miniature in Camera RAW and pick Save Image - Save Image..., then pick JPG and maximum quality. Forget about PNG, who gives a fuck? This isn't pixel art.
That's it for now. Have fun!
