How to use Expert RAW on your Samsung Galaxy phone

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

The Expert Raw app is only available for the S21 Ultra. The app allows you to control manual exposure settings for all four of the rear cameras, which is nice, but the more interesting thing it allows you to do is shoot multi-frame RAW files. What you need to know about Expert RAW is here.

What is multi-frame RAW?

The answer is that it's better than before. If you prefer to fine-tune things like white balance and exposure photo editing software, you'll benefit from the fact that RAW shooting saves more data than a JPEG image file. JPEGs are smaller and easier to share, but they are not as flexible for post-processing. A major disadvantage to shooting a standard JPEG image is that lots of smartphones offer a traditional RAW shooting mode.

When you take a photo in your phone's native camera app, the resulting HEIC file often includes data from multiple frames that were captured very quickly when you pressed the shutter button. This allows the phone to create a single image file with wider dynamic range, making a backlit subject brighter without adding a lot of ugly noise.

Traditional RAW mode on a phone is more flexible for editing than a typical JPEG but loses out on the computational benefits that come with multi-frame processing. This makes shooting RAW on a phone pointless. The size of the sensor and lens in a smartphones makes them use computational tricks to capture more image data and compensate for the small size of the camera. It is usually better to just let your phone do its job and take a picture.

Multi-frame RAW, which several phone manufacturers have introduced, makes it much more useful, especially when you're taking a photo with your phone. The data from multiple frames recorded into a single file is the best of both worlds.

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Which Samsung phones offer Expert RAW?

The S22 series, including the standard S22, S22 Plus, and S22 Ultra, have all supported Expert RAW as of February 25th. There are certain hardware requirements that a phone needs to meet to be able to run Expert RAW, so only a few other top-tier devices will offer it. The list includes:

• Galaxy S21 Ultra, full release from beta expected sometime in March
• Galaxy Z Fold 3, support expected in April
• Galaxy S20 Ultra, Note 20 Ultra, and Z Fold 2, support expected in the first half of 2022

How do you shoot photos in Expert RAW?

The feature isn't included in the standard camera app, but it is a separate app that needs to be downloaded from the store. Go to the store app and look for Expert RAW. Once you have downloaded it and agreed to give it access to your camera and microphone, you're ready to start shooting.

The letter icons at the bottom of the screen are similar to the Pro mode in the standard camera app and indicate the 0.6x, 1x, and 3x lens options. When you press the shutter, you will see a text that encourages you to hold the phone still. It's not something you'll want to use for moving subjects.

In my testing, the resulting files are around 30MB to 40MB each. If you tap the settings icon on the shooting screen, you can choose a high-efficiency RAW option, but it only saved me a couple of MBs per image. Unless you bought a phone with a lot of storage, you'll want to stick to using Expert RAW when it will make a difference.

How do you edit Expert RAW images?

You can use any RAW processing software that you like, because the expert files are saved as standard DNG files. If you want to use the shortcut in the Expert RAW app, you'll need to log in with an Adobe account. You can get a two-month free trial from the store, but after that you have to pay for an annual subscription.

You can either save your photo to cloud storage or use the share icon to take your photo into a free app.

You will enjoy more freedom to push shadows or pull back highlights with your image in the editing software of your choice. The difference is significant because I took a standard RAW and a multi-frame RAW of the same scene for comparison purposes. There is some clear banding in the standard RAW, while the expert one looks much cleaner.

If you want to go easy on your phone's storage, use the better RAW mode when you're shooting a scene with a wide dynamic range.