Take RAW photos on iPhone or iPad? This is very easy with the Camera+ app. You can later optimally adjust this in the mobile or non-mobile version of Lightroom or another RAW editor. Recently, a special function has also been added, with which photos can be blown up to more than 40 megapixel resolution with very little loss of quality. Let’s look at the possibilities.
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Camera+ is the app you must have if you are serious about it want to shoot shooting with your iPhone or even iPad. He has been around for years and was (and is) known for the ability to shoot photos in RAW format. It is therefore important to go through the settings of the app.
Tap the button with the three dotted lines (.-) at the bottom of the screen (after starting the app…). In the opened menu, first tap Save & Quality. Make sure under format the option HEIF is chosen, with as Quality Normal or high. Then – a bit lower – you have to turn the switch behind Save combined HEIF and RAW DNG to turn off. This will save both a HEIF and a RAW (DNG) file when shooting. If you turn on the switch, the RAW and HEIF are combined in one file.
This is possible with the HEIF format, but perhaps not every RAW editor can handle it well. An additional advantage of saving separately is that you immediately have a shareable photo (mail, social media) in HEIF format, while you can play around with the RAW editing later.
Shooting in RAW
To actually shoot in RAW format, tap anywhere outside the settings panel (or, in the case of the iPhone, the camera button). You are now back in the ‘viewfinder’. Tap here on the yellow button in which by default CAR state. On the iPad you will find it in the bottom right corner of the screen, on the iPhone in the top middle. If you now take a photo with the shutter button, both the HEIF version and a RAW version are saved in the universal DNG file format.
Those photos are first saved to the app’s internal camera roll. To open the camera roll, tap the flower button at the bottom of the screen. Then tap the photo and then RAW adjust. If you don’t see that option, you’ve tapped the HEIF copy and you should have the other saved photo. In the panel that opens, you can completely tweak your photo with a range of options.
Advantage of RAW – basically a kind of ‘digital negative’ is that no data is lost due to compression. Which means that your under- or overexposed parts often still contain a lot of information. In jpg it is soon pure black and pure white. Balancing light and dark in RAW files often results in much nicer photos.
It makes little sense to give a complete course in RAW photo editing here. The best way to do that is – in our opinion – with Lightroom on a somewhat larger screen. Read more in the article about Edit RAW photos in Lightroom for iOS and iPadOS.
Export in RAW
To simply export your RAW photo to your iPad or iPhone Camera Roll, tap the Camera+ internal camera roll (hidden behind the flower bud) on the photo to be exported and then Part. You can then save the photo to the iOS/iPadOS film roll or to a folder.
From there you can transfer the case to, for example, a NAS or a shared folder on a PC or Mac. Or use iTunes to sync. After that, the transferred photo can be opened in, for example, the aforementioned Lightroom on the PC.
Smart magnification with neural engine
You can do a lot more with Camera+. You are undoubtedly familiar with many of the options from an SLR or system camera. The ‘inevitable’ filters are also available. If you want to get the most out of iPhone (and iPad) photography, this is the app you need. But we already promised: Camera+ can do something special. And that is ‘extreme’ enlargement to a resolution of more than 40 megapixels. For this, the neural engine that is incorporated in the more recent versions of iPhones and iPads is used.
That neural engine is actually a kind of AI accelerator that makes all kinds of things possible around artificial intelligence, machine learning and so on. But then very quickly and without tens of minutes of waiting time. In many cases, the results of these ‘AI’ magnifications are astonishingly good. Details and sharpness are preserved, for example.
A golden tip in advance: do not use digitally zoomed photos. A more rudimentary form of digital magnification has already been applied to them, which produces significantly less good results if you inflate them even further with Camera+ enlarger. Just shoot, then blow up later and crop out the desired part of your photo.
Import previously taken photos
It’s also good to know that you can also import photos previously taken with the regular camera app of your iPhone or iPad. And what you should also know is that this trick only works with photos saved in HEIF format! In our example we are going to import a previously taken photo from the film roll. To do this, first tap the flower button in Camera+ again.
Then click that button again, after which all your photos will be shown on the default camera roll of your device. Tap a photo and then edit. In the preview, tap the crop button and then the button ULTRARES. Don’t see that button? Then the photo in question is not saved in HEIF format!
Perhaps imported from a compact, SLR or system camera? Or you have not set your iPhone to save photos in HEIF format, see tip below. If you see the button, tap it. Wait a few seconds and your photo will be digitally magnified about four times.
Zoom in see the result. This is often much better than any other magnification method. In particular, details are preserved. Ideal if, for example, you take a picture of an insect or a flower. You do see – when zooming in very far – the typical effect of ‘computational photography’. In other words: it looks more like a painted image up close. But that’s the case with just about every modern smartphone photo. Unless you shoot in RAW. But then you can’t use this AI magnification method again.
Finally
Camera+ offers the possibility to shoot ‘directly’ in ULTRARES. We advise against it, because then there is not really a way back if you do not like the result. In addition, you can export an ULTRARES photo to your device’s camera roll. To do that, tap Done. To prevent your original photo from being overwritten by the enlarged version, it’s best to tap Refuseafter which you can still export the photo separately as a new copy.
Finally, to make your iPhone or iPad save photos taken in HEIF format by default, start the app Settings. Tap in it Camera and then on File Formats. Choose High Efficiency and finished. Almost every photo editor now supports this format.
It produces a lot smaller files than the old JPG, in better quality. Moreover, there is more afterwards more possible in editing and correction. Just turn it on and leave it on if you haven’t already done so.
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