Instagram is today rolling out support for the new ProRAW photos that are able to be captured with the iPhone 12 and the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
Instagram developer Tim Johnsen shared the news on Twitter, where he also said that ProRAW photos in the DNG format are not able to be edited on Instagram. Further details aren't available, but it seems that Instagram is converting the ProRAW file into JPG that's shown on Instagram.
Support is limited, but those who take ProRAW photos and edit them outside of Instagram will be able to share the resulting image directly on the social network without having to create a separate JPG. ProRAW images are large in size, coming in at around 25MB, so Instagram is compressing them.
ProRAW is an iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max feature that was enabled with the iOS 14.3 update. It takes advantage of the computational photographer features that Apple adds into its iPhone while also giving users control over white balance, noise reduction, sharpening, and more.
As photographer Austin Mann highlighted earlier this week, ProRAW is ideal in situations where Apple's general algorithms may struggle, such as mixed indoor lighting, extreme low light, and super high dynamic range images.
Top Rated Comments
Instagram is not known for high quality photos. They compress the heck out of anything you upload.
They’re dropping that 25MB file into probably a 500K jpeg and certainly not keeping the ProRAW file.