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How to edit ProRAW photos on your iPhone

How to edit ProRAW photos on your iPhone

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Taking a RAW photo is only half of the journey. Here’s how to edit your ProRAW image and turn it into something you can share.

Hand holding iPhone showing back of phone with camera against illustrated background.

Apple’s ProRAW camera feature is a powerful tool to have in your back pocket. An image taken in ProRAW mode combines the same great post-processing flexibility of a traditional RAW file with the benefits of multi-frame computational photography. Kind of the best of both worlds! But once you’ve gone through the steps to enable it on your iPhone and have taken your photo, that’s when the real work starts: processing and converting it to a shareable format like JPEG, PNG, or HEIF. 

ProRAW files are saved in Adobe’s ubiquitous DNG format, which is compatible with virtually every RAW photo editing app under the sun. That means you have a lot of options, including just sending the file to a computer and using desktop software. But you don’t need access to a computer — you can process your image right on your phone, either using a third-party app or Apple’s own editing tools. Here’s how to go about it. (I followed these steps on an iPhone 14 Pro running iOS 16.3.1.)

  • Open your RAW photo and tap edit in the top right of the screen
  • If you’re viewing your image in the camera app gallery, the edit options will appear at the bottom of the screen
  • Scroll through the adjustment options below your image and use the tools you would like
  • You can tap the three-ring filter icon at the bottom of the screen to apply a filter. This is not to be confused with Apple’s Photographic Styles, which are “baked in” to the capture process
  • If you need to rotate the photo, use the crop tool, the icon on the bottom right of the editing pane
  • Tap Done at the bottom right of your screen to save your changes. There’s no option to save it as a separate image, but you can always revert your changes to the original by opening it again in the Photos app, tapping the three-dot menu icon in the upper right, and choosing Revert to Original

Once you’ve made edits to your RAW file, you can use the Photos app’s sharing functions to export a JPEG version of your image. You can email it, post it to Instagram, or put it on your digital picture frame — it’s your choice.

Screenshot of an image in edit view of Apple Photos app.

Screenshot of an image in edit view of Apple Photos app.

Screenshot of final image and app sharing options.

Screenshot of final image and app sharing options.

  • Scroll to your photo in the Photos app and tap the share / export icon in the lower left
  • Tap Options at the top of the screen
  • Toggle All Photos Data on and press Done
  • Tap the Airdrop icon below the image and choose your destination
  • On the Mac, tap Accept and Save to Downloads when prompted. This creates a folder in Downloads with both the DNG file and your edited JPEG.

If you aren’t AirDropping to a Mac and you want to save your DNG file somewhere else, you’ll have to make a copy of your edited RAW and revert changes.

  • In the Photos app, scroll to your image and tap the three-dot menu icon in the upper right
  • Tap Duplicate, then tap the three-dot menu and select Revert to Original
  • Tap the export icon in the lower left and choose how you’d like to send your file
Screenshot of a menu showing toggle for All Photos Data.

Screenshot of a menu showing toggle for All Photos Data.