sdwI think the Halide update made me realize how badly I need to write / record a Q&A on what RAW images and image processing really are.
This stuff is hard to understand and the latter basically indistinguishable from magic nowadays!
Curt Clifton@sdw I would love to read this!
Andy Bold@sdw I love Process Zero.
Phones are great at making photos that look “good”, but they often don’t look “right”. I haven’t been this excited about phone photography since Hipstamatic leaned into “The camera is a bit rubbish”. Now it’s “The camera is great - let’s let it shine.”
I cannot wait to see what’s next.
@andybold well said!!
erutanYeah a friend asked how one of my photos was so crisp, I explained shooting RAW and how the iPhone sort watercolor smears things. They showed me a photo of a bee they took with the camera app as proof you didn't need to shoot RAW - it looked really unnatural to me (the wings were super HDRed) but I didn't rain on their parade. :)
Stephen@sdw Please!
Richard Kolasatook this last night. nothing special but there’s a real camera quality to it I love
Leonard Wong@sdw Please do if you can. I learn so much about photography just reading what you write.
Appreciate it!
Appreciate it!
Simon@sdw please do! love the deep dives you do, it would be so interesting to read
Simon Harper@sdw I 100% approve of this idea 🙌🏼🙏🏼
On that note - how is this different from just shooting in (non Pro) RAW with smartest processing turned off in previous updates aside from the image lab side?
Is it stripping even more processing out, or is it really the image lab functionality which will make standard RAW more appealing to folks?
@erutan basically, you choice was to either process that raw file in an editor or use Apple's processing for a JPEG. Now we have our own, minimal process!
@sdw ok that makes sense, thanks for clarifying!
It's kind of amusing to use the processing lab as a hook into shooting pure RAW (and how people are pleasantly surprised by it). I think the subtitles make the differences clearer.
It is a much nicer workflow (ProRAW does tend to come out looking much better as it's already processed) and it'll be fun to test out but I was wondering if I was missing something on the capture side, as zero processing seemed like it had been in there for years. :)
@sdw I do really like being able to just switch between RAW & 48 MP ProRAW more simply as those modes are prob 99.9% of what I shoot in Halide these days.
There's still something of a glitch regarding shooting manual - I'm not sure why having ProRAW set to 48MP should matter when I'm shooting 12MP RAW, and having to turn it off when shooting RAW then go back and re-enable it for ProRAW is a bit awkward.
I'll file that as a support request if you want / it seems solvable.
@sdw ok poking at it more now, what you're doing is rendering a high quality HEIC file with no processing based off of the native RAW file, then there's an exposure slider.
That does make quick sharing of a RAW photo easier, especially if you don't have something like LR CC - I generally just dump all my RAWs into an album there after a trip (or one or two during if I want) and have it setup to add a basic preset and apply auto.
Impossible outside of Apple updates (and they wouldn't do this), but it'd be lovely to have the extra ProRAW dynamic range without all the noise reduction. It obviously has to be processed, but a reduced process would be amazing.
I find myself often just shooting RAW on my 14 Pro and using LR's AI denoise if ISO will be too high vs ProRAW now. That said 48MP of complex lighting like fog through a forest are amazing.
Hoping the 16 will have an even lighter touch like the 15 Pro did.
@erutan we do have an option for reduced processing in ProRAW. It's not perfect, but it's something!
Multi-frame merged exposures will always have some degree of NR.
@sdw yeah I've used it, still too much NR (not blaming you!).
At times deep fusion etc worked really well, at others it just completely destroyed shots (I had a nice one of sandstone texture that looked bizarre). I just have it turned off and don't really bother to toggle it. HDR seems a little unnecessary with ProRAW now - high contrast seems the only real use case for me aside from just subtle light where the 48MP shines.
Fab@sdw Please do it!