What Is A RAW File?

Date First Published: 8th January 2024

Topic: Computer Systems

Subtopic: Computer Software

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty Level: 6/10

Learn about what a RAW file is in this article.

A RAW file is an uncompressed and unprocessed photo captured by a digital camera. Due to lossless quality, RAW files are usually large in size, often 5 to 10 times larger than JPEG images, so they take up more space on hard drives and memory cards, and take longer to transfer between devices. Most digital cameras compress photos as JPEGs immediately after capturing the image, which greatly reduces the file size.

Out of any file format, the RAW file format stores the largest amount of detail, which photographers can convert into other formats so that they can be shared. The main benefit of saving in the RAW format is that it allows photographers to edit the photos since the original image data from the sensor is saved, allowing changes, such as exposure and colouring to be made. This means that the settings usually set in the digital camera can be changed.

Editing

RAW files cannot usually be edited or printed with most graphics software since they are not saved in a standard image format. This leads to image viewing programs not recognising them. There is no universal RAW file format and camera manufacturers use their own RAW image format, so no program can open all RAW files. This makes it difficult to share with other people and impossible to upload RAW images on social media.

For example, .dng is the Adobe RAW file format. The process of opening these files using Adobe software, such as Lightroom is simple. It is also an open-source format, meaning that it's free to use by anyone. Google Photos also supports the DNG file type.

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