How to capture and edit RAW photos on an Android
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Smartphone cameras are tuned to help youtake the best photosyou can without a fuss: just point and shoot. But if you’re really into photography, you may be familiar with the concept of shooting in RAW.RAW format images contain more of the information your camera sensor collects when you press the shutter button than the JPEG files you get by default, providing greater editing flexibility. If you want to try mobile RAW photography on your Google Pixel ortop Samsung phone, here’s what you’ll do.
What is a RAW file?
Your Android phone usually saves the photo in JPEG format. It completes processing and compressing simultaneously. If you want uncompressed image files, capture photos in the RAW format. You can easily access your sensor’s recorded raw data and have file sizes that are several times larger than PNGs or JPEGs. Since the files are saved in DNG (Digital Negative), they may seem boring and unsaturated. You can use thebest photo editing appsto apply the finishing touches.
We took two images in JPEG and RAW format, respectively. The JPEG image is 2.9MB, while the RAW (.dng) one weighs around 15MB.
How to take RAW photos on Android
Photographers who shoot with dedicated cameras often use RAW files for greater editing flexibility. Many of the best Android phones also let you take RAW photos. Here’s how.
Take RAW photos on Google Pixel phones
On Google Pixel phones, RAW files are in the .dng format and saved to their own folder calledRaw. When viewed in Google Photos, RAW files have a camera shutter icon on the thumbnails.
When you don’t want to shoot photos in RAW, turn this setting toJPEG only. RAW files take up a lot of storage space.
Take RAW photos on Samsung Galaxy phones
On Samsung Android devices, RAW copies are only saved when shooting in Pro mode, which is accessed from theMoreoption at the bottom of the camera app. They’re saved to your camera roll along with regular JPEG files. The RAW format versions are in .dng format and have a RAW badge in the upper-right corner when viewed in the Samsung Gallery app.
Take RAW photos on other Android phones
If your Android phone doesn’t support RAW mode in the preinstalled camera app, you must use a third-party camera app to complete the job. The Google Play Store is packed with such camera apps. ProCam X is one such app to capture RAW images on any Android phone.
If you want to unlock high resolution, unlimited video recording, and more features, upgrade to the Pro app for $5.
How to edit RAW photos on Android
Not all Android photo editing apps support editing RAW images. Google Photos, for example, offers limited RAW support, which means none. Google-owned Snapseed provides a robust RAW photo-editing experience, but the app can also be a bit unwieldy.
Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Lightroom is one of many free RAW editing options on the Play Store. While some of Lightroom’s advanced features, like masking and healing, require an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, the basics work for free, but you need an Adobe account.
We show you how to use Adobe Lightroom to edit your photos. If you use another app, it will work differently, but the principles are essentially the same.
To open a RAW image in Lightroom, tap the blue button that looks like a photo with a plus on it in the lower-right corner of the app’s homescreen, then select a RAW image. Alternatively, find a RAW file in your gallery app and tap theSharebutton to share it to Lightroom. When you tap the Edit button, Lightroom doesn’t appear in Google Photos' list of compatible RAW editors.
What you see in the editor is roughly what your phone’s camera captured before post-processing was applied. Smartphones apply post-processing automatically. However, when you edit a photo’s RAW file, you take control before that happens. After opening a RAW file in Lightroom, a strip of tools appears at the bottom of the screen. We’ll touch on the ones that are available in the free version.
Crop & Rotate: Reframe your shot
Use the Crop & Rotate tool to trim your photo. To crop the photo, drag the white handles on its edges. To rotate it, slide your finger left or right under the photo and near the dotted arc. To reset the picture’s position, double-tap the picture.
Auto: Adobe’s best guess
Lightroom offers an Auto feature that touches up your photos in a single tap, tweaking light and color settings. If you like how it looks, you can keep it. Otherwise, you’ll want to use the manual settings.
Light: Change your photo’s lighting
Lightroom’s Light tools let you change things like brightness and contrast to dial in the look of your photo’s lighting.
Color: Tools to make the colors pop
The Color tools let you tweak white balance and saturation.
Effects: A grab-bag of features
Effects is a bit of a catch-all, with tools to add or remove various effects.
Detail: Reduce noise and sharpen
To give you a better sense of what you’ll see as you edit your RAW files, here’s an example of the process with a photo taken on the Google Pixel 7 Pro.
You won’t use every tool on every photo. The warmth, tint, exposure, and several other qualities of this photo weren’t changed. The sliders you’ll use depend on the look you want. Once you’re finished editing, tap theShareicon in the upper-right corner of the screen. There are options to save the photo to your device (it lands in a folder called “AdobeLightroom”), share it to an app, or save it with custom settings (with options for file type, resolution, and quality).
Before you get too excited about the ability to edit RAW files catapulting your mobile photography to new heights, notice how similar the manually processed RAW photo in the example looks to the same photo as processed by the Pixel 7 Pro with no input from the photographer:
Left:Manually edited from RAW.Right: Automatically processed by Pixel 7 Pro. Is it worth the effort?
If you don’t want to deal with Adobe apps on your Android app, use Pixlr to edit your RAW photos. It’s a feature-rich Lightroom alternative on Android.
Do you really need to shoot photos in RAW?
We wouldn’t recommend most people — even most hobbyist photographers — manually process RAW smartphone photos. But if you’re a budding photographer who wants the practice, have a specific photo in mind that you don’t think your phone’s image processing would do justice, or are curious about mobile photography, there’s value in checking it out. If you own a Samsung Galaxy phone, we have a guide to help youget the most out of your photos with Samsung Expert Raw.
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