How to take and edit RAW photos on Android smartphones

Smartphone cameras have come a long way from the 2MP cameras found on the original iPhone. Today, smartphones boast multiple image sensors and computational photography to mimic professional cameras. While smartphone cameras are mighty capable, they are also ones where you are dependent on your smartphone brand’s image pipeline for the result. One of the ways to bypass that, is to shoot in RAW format and edit them later.

The ability to take photos in RAW image format is not new, and the Nokia Lumia 1520 had it way back in 2013. With RAW image format, you can store more of the information collected by your camera sensor compared to a format like JPEG. If you have a top-end Samsung Galaxy device such as the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, or camera-centric flagship like Xiaomi 14 then you can take RAW photos on your phone and even edit them.

How to take RAW photos on Android phones

Many flagship Android smartphones support taking photos in RAW format. In most cases, you will have to enable RAW support from the camera settings. If you have a Pixel device, then go to Camera > Settings > More settings > Advanced and enable the toggle next to RAW+JPEG. You can toggle RAW capture on or off from the Settings option. 

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If you have a flagship Samsung Galaxy smartphone then you can take RAW photos by following the below steps:

Step 1: Open the camera app. 

Step 2: Tap on the Settings gear in the upper-left corner. 

Step 3: Go to ‘Format’ and ‘Advanced options.’ 

Step 4: Click on the toggle next to RAW copies. 

Once you have enabled the RAW photography on your Samsung Galaxy phone, the feature will only work when you are shooting in Pro mode. To shoot in Pro mode, you need to open the camera app and go to the More option at the bottom. By default, Samsung saves your photos in both RAW as well as regular JPEG format.

The RAW file is saved as a .dng file and features a prominent RAW badge in the upper-right corner. In the case of Pixel phones, RAW files are saved to their own folder in .dng format and have a camera shutter icon to indicate the format.

RAW photos to edit: Why it matters

The primary reason to capture RAW photos on an Android smartphone is to retain extra data and edit them later for images with greater detail and depth. While you don’t need to shoot in RAW all the time, there will be times when you want to click pictures, edit them at your convenience and share them with your friends and family. During such a situation, a RAW photo will offer more flexibility than possible with JPEG images.

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With RAW photos to edit, you are essentially looking at using the sensor data and then making big changes to the photo. If you were to edit a JPEG photo, you might end up washing out the highlights and shadows or making the white balance too dramatic. By editing RAW photos shot on your phone, you don’t have to make many compromises to achieve the desired result since the sensor retains a lot more information than possible with the JPEG format.

RAW images for editing: How to edit RAW photos on Android

There are a number of apps available that allow you to edit RAW photos on your Android smartphone. For editing RAW images, Google Photos is limited since it converts the file to JPEG before editing. Now, Google-owned Snapseed offers a robust editing experience, but the best app for editing RAW photos on Android has to be Adobe Lightroom.

Adobe Lightroom is free on Google Play Store and you can edit your RAW photos by clicking on the blue button with a plus sign in the lower right corner of the app. Now, select your RAW image from the phone’s gallery and click on the share button. Once you open the RAW file in Lightroom, you will see a row of tools at the bottom of the screen for editing.

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The free version of Adobe Lightroom is quite useful, but if you are looking for masking and healing tools then you will need an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. With the free version of Adobe Lightroom, you can crop and rotate your shot, and change your photo’s lighting including exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, and blacks. You can also change the colour, which includes adjusting the temperature, tint, vibrance, and saturation.

You can change the texture and clarity from effects while sharpening and noise reduction can be done from detail. For a more straightforward experience in editing RAW images, you can also consider Pixlr. It is important to note that you won’t be changing every setting to get the best result, but editing RAW photos will put the control in your hands and allow you to bring your own vision for the photo to life.