iPhone 16 Pro Max ProRAW and Lightroom processing
Last rainy weekend I started testing the ProRAW option of the iPhone 16 Pro MAX. ProRAW is functionality/option in IOS that is restricted only to the Pro iPhone models. All sensor information are saved pixel for pixel in that RAW Files. No lens corrections or color or exposure corrections curves are applied.
Due to this purity of data a professional correction e.g. with Adobe Lightroom is most efficient. If you choose JPG or HEIF format files from IOS, the processing has happened within the iPhone. Of course we must be honest and the corrections even based on the GPU and AI capabilities of iPhones like the iPhone 16 Pro Max are excellent and up to 98% of the people out there, taking randomly memory and family pictures, are more than happy with the offered results. The limitation of adjustments generated or initiated by myself are the reason why I belong to the last 2% of the people. For me is not just choosing the composition and content of the pictures an act of creativity but also reducing or emphasizing colors, exposure, sharpness or field of depth is an important part of it. I hate to give this to an emotionless AI in a computer. Yes I am a Boomer and AI is surrounding us today more in more at work or social life but for me is taking images with a camera or even smart phone an act of creating art using my own creativity.
Same thing is valid for writing into this blog. Word and other text processing software is offering more and more to let their generative AI optimize my text. NO, even if my way of expressing myself might be odd from time to time to native English speaker, I don´t want to use these fancy tools, as the result will be more and more a common way of expression and we will loose our personality and identity. I am proud to say, this is an 100% AI free Blog. All images are taken, composed and processed by a human and also the surrounding text is 100% AI free! We should develop an AI free logo to mark real human work for the future.
Sorry for stalling or drifting of for a moment but as you might notice this has been important to me.
Back to the results of this test using 48 megapixels ProRAW format on the iPhone 16 Pro MAX. To be able to compare results I generated first an unprocessed JPG file from the ProRAW Image. This image is not bad at all. Better then many other in camera or smart phone processed JPG images. This proofs to us that the optical lens and sensor combination of the iPhone 16 Pro Max is very good. Typically on smart phones the software needs to compensate big optical lens and sensor problems which already reduces the image quality over all. Not in this case. It has been simple just with some small adjustment to produce a great image with depth and intense colors and highlights out of the RAW file while maintaining resolution and many details. On the portrait oriented first processed picture I have even used the Lightroom build in lens correction but I am not very sure if that was even necessary. Please judge yourself.
Verdict
In summary, the Lightroom processed images are close to images produced by my Fujifilm X-PRO3 camera. To confirm this result, I will continue to take such ProRAW 48 megapixels in the coming week. At the end I will produce a shoot out on my lens test setup. Then the comparison will be completely transparent.