Edit iPhone ProRAW on a Mac

Updated August 30, 2026 · Daniel Tello · RevelRaw

Quick answer: an iPhone ProRAW photo is a .DNG file, a standard RAW format. Move it to your Mac with AirDrop or a cable, drop it into RevelRaw, and you edit it with real RAW latitude: white balance, highlights and shadows all stay adjustable. RevelRaw is free to download with one full-quality export included, no subscription required. It needs macOS 26 or later.

Your iPhone shoots some of the most editable files you own, and most of them never get edited on anything bigger than a phone screen. This guide covers what a ProRAW file holds, which iPhones write one, how to get it onto your Mac without losing quality, and what changes once you develop it in a desktop RAW editor. It doubles as our DNG guide, because ProRAW is DNG, and so are the RAW files from drones, Android phones and Adobe's converter.

What a ProRAW file actually is

Turn on ProRAW and your iPhone stops writing HEIC and starts writing DNG, Adobe's openly documented Digital Negative format. It is not a plain sensor dump, though. Before saving, the iPhone shoots a burst, aligns the frames and merges them, the same multi-frame trick behind its clean handheld night shots. The merged result lands in the DNG at 12 bits per channel.

You get both halves of the bargain. The computational work that makes a phone photo usable at all, noise reduction across frames and detail from the burst, is already in the file. The decisions a photographer wants to keep, white balance, exposure, tone and color, are not baked in. A blown-looking sky in the preview often has recoverable highlight data sitting underneath.

Which iPhones shoot ProRAW

Apple puts the ProRAW toggle on Pro and Pro Max models only, starting with the iPhone 12 Pro. Switch it on under Settings > Camera > Formats, then tap the RAW badge in the Camera app when you want it. Two body-specific details worth knowing:

iPhone 14 Pro and later capture 48-megapixel ProRAW from the main camera, roughly 75 MB per file against 25 MB at 12 megapixels. The extra resolution is real; so is the disk space.
iPhone 16 Pro and later can compress ProRAW with JPEG-XL inside the DNG, in lossless and smaller lossy flavors — a 48-megapixel file drops from about 75 MB to 45 MB lossless, or around 20 MB lossy. The extension and the workflow on the Mac stay the same.

On a non-Pro iPhone the toggle never appears, but third-party camera apps can save standard DNG files on those bodies, and everything on this page applies to them too.

Getting the files onto your Mac

The trap is exporting a flattened JPEG by accident and editing that. Three routes hand over the actual DNG:

AirDrop. Select the photos on the iPhone, share, AirDrop to your Mac. The DNG arrives as shot. This is the fastest route for a handful of frames.
Cable. Plug in and import with the Photos app or Image Capture, which pulls originals straight off the phone. Best for a big batch.
Out of the Photos library. If the shots already live in Photos on your Mac, use File > Export > Export Unmodified Original. Plain Export hands you a processed JPEG or HEIC instead, which defeats the point.

Want to confirm what you got? Drop the file into our free in-browser EXIF viewer; it reads the camera, lens and exposure data locally, no upload.

Editing ProRAW in RevelRaw

Drag the DNG into RevelRaw and it opens like any other RAW: AI scene detection reads the shot and ranks 40+ presets so the likely fits surface first, with the full fine-tune set underneath. The latitude difference against editing the HEIC is immediate. Pull the highlights slider and a washed-out sky comes back with color in it. Lift shadows two stops and they open up without falling apart. Shift white balance and skin tones move cleanly instead of shearing, because no white point was ever baked in.

From there the workflow is the same one Sony and Canon shooters use: tone curve, color grading, HSL, AI denoise for the dim frames, then export as JPEG, PNG, TIFF or HEIF with platform presets for Instagram, print and web. Everything runs on your Mac; the photo never touches a server.

Shot ProRAW this week? Develop one properly. Download RevelRaw, drop a DNG in, and watch the scene ranked against 40+ presets in seconds, with one full-quality export free. Requires macOS 26 or later. Get it on the Mac App Store.

ProRAW vs RAW from a dedicated camera

The two kinds of file are cousins, not twins. A Sony .ARW or Canon .CR3 records one exposure of un-demosaiced sensor data from photosites many times larger than a phone's. A ProRAW records a merged burst, already demosaiced. In practice:

The dedicated camera wins on single-frame headroom: deeper highlight recovery, finer texture at low ISO, and files that hold up to heavier crops.
The iPhone file starts cleaner in bad light than its sensor size has any right to, because the noise reduction happened across frames before the file was written.
Both respond the same way in the editor. Sliders, curves and presets behave identically; only the ceiling differs.

If you shoot both, one desktop workflow covering both beats editing your camera work on a Mac and your phone work on the phone.

DNG beyond the iPhone

Because DNG is a published format rather than one brand's secret, it shows up everywhere. DJI drones write their RAW stills as DNG. Many Android phones save DNG from their pro camera modes. And Adobe's free DNG Converter turns RAW files from discontinued cameras into DNGs that modern software still reads. RevelRaw opens all of these the same way it opens ProRAW, alongside the 24 camera RAW formats it supports natively.

FAQ

Can RevelRaw open iPhone ProRAW files?

Yes. ProRAW saves as a DNG, a standard RAW format RevelRaw reads natively. Drag the file in or pick it from File > Open: AI scene detection ranks 40+ presets against the shot, every fine-tune control works on it, and exports go out as JPEG, PNG, TIFF or HEIF.

Do I lose Apple's image processing when I edit ProRAW on a Mac?

No. The iPhone merges its frames before it writes the file, so the multi-frame noise handling and detail travel inside the DNG. What stays open is everything you care about in an edit: white balance, exposure, highlights, shadows and color are still yours to set.

Why are ProRAW files so large?

A 12-megapixel ProRAW runs around 25 MB and a 48-megapixel one around 75 MB, against a few MB for the same shot as HEIC. The DNG keeps 12 bits per channel instead of a compressed final image, which is exactly the headroom you edit with later. Newer Pro models can shrink files with JPEG-XL compression inside the DNG.

Does the regular (non-Pro) iPhone shoot ProRAW?

No, Apple ships the ProRAW toggle on Pro and Pro Max models only, from the iPhone 12 Pro onward. On a non-Pro iPhone, third-party camera apps can capture standard DNG files instead, and those open in RevelRaw the same way.

Can RevelRaw open DNG files from drones and Android phones?

Yes. DNG is a published Adobe format, so RAW stills from DJI drones, DNGs from Android camera apps and files produced by Adobe's free DNG Converter all open in RevelRaw with the full preset and fine-tune set.