New Lightroom Mobile Lets You Shoot DNG RAW Photos with Your iPhone

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Adobe made a big announcement today that will change the iPhone photography game entirely: the newest version of Lightroom Mobile for iOS now lets you capture RAW DNG photos right inside the app.

This is huge news made possible by the release of Apple’s newest operating system, iOS 10. Lightroom Mobile could already edit RAW files before this, but never before has an iOS app been able to capture DNG RAW photos natively. The quality and latitude of your iPhone photos is about to get a whole lot better.

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“Having a true end-to-end raw workflow, powered by DNG and Lightroom, on your iPhone and iPad makes it possible to create absolutely stunning photos that, until a few years ago, could only have been done with a traditional camera,” writes Adobe in their announcement. “The DNG file format […] offers far more quality and control than either the JPEG or TIFF file formats.”

From white balance adjustments after the fact, to increased dynamic range latitude for recovering details in the highlights and shadows, to a bump in quality that comes from the lack of compression artifacts, iPhones have never been a more capable photographic device.

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“In a perfect world, people would be able to shoot raw without the frustrations associated with having an array of raw file formats,” writes Photoshop creator Thomas Knoll, “Apple’s new iOS 10 release moves us one step closer to this perfect world.”

Now that iOS 10 and Android OS both use Adobe DNG as their standard file format for RAW photos, writes Thomas, RAW photography is becoming more accessible for more photographers. “This is wonderful news if you care about the quality of your images.”

The’s just one catch, and that’s compatibility. DNG shooting will only be available for iPhone 6S/Plus, iPhone SE, iPad Pro 9.7, and Phone 7/Plus users. iPhone 6 users (like the lowly editor typing this) are out of luck.

To learn more about this update, click here. And if you want to take advantage, update your favorite iOS device to iOS 10 and either download Lightroom Mobile from the iTunes App Store or update the app.