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I'm a long time pixel 6 owner and I really like the photos that it takes.
I took a picture today that I like and when I looked at the information about it I see that the resolution was just 12 megapixels, whereas the camera can apparently do up to 50 megapixels in raw format.
I didn't know this!
Should I switch on the raw picture option?
(What does it mean? 😬)
Raw is best for editing in the old world of proper digital cameras.
Some apps won't open raw footage due to size.
RAW pictures are unprocessed files, which allows them to be digitally ‘developed’ in a programme like Adobe Lightroom. If you set the phone/camera to output a JPEG file, it will be processed in camera to bring out the colours, highlights etc, then compressed to produce a smaller file that can be used straight away. JPEGs can still be tweaked, but to a much lesser extent. RAW files are much more flexible, but generally look washed out and bland without some level of processing.
I’m really big on RAW from my Olympus Camera. But RAW from my phone is poor. You loose all the magic from the clever processing
So I wouldn’t bother. I do recommend Snapseed for editing jpg
Your camera will be combining pixels to improve picture quality. I think most phones do this nowadays.
If it's a 12Mp image, it's likely combining 4 neighbouring pixels into one (12Mp x4 = 48Mp).
Some phones let you choose not to do this and take a full-res image but it probably won't look any better.
RAW will do the same, i.e take a full resolution image, but it won't be processed by the phone. You can do that yourself in a third party app.
RAW is for when you want to have all the flexibility possible to implement your complete photographic 'vision' with the image you take with a camera (phone). It gives you maximum capability to use post-processing software of some form to recover shadows, sharpen, saturate, shift black-point etc. whatever you like. Without it, you are somewhat limited to the decisions the native JPEG processing alogorithm on your camera (phone) bakes-in to the redered image you see on your phone. Luckily, most phones (particularly now) are spectacularly good at having very well-enhanced JPEG image processing that will bring the best out of your images without any photographic post-processing needed. RAW phone images are really for keen amature-enthusiast or pro photographers, who are looking to have the most flexibility to get an exact look they want with the images they take. RAW also takes up a great deal more storage capacity.
The difference in megapixel count you mention, though, is fairly significant. Perhaps you could try turning RAW on for very special images - and learn the post-processing skills, or use some downloadable presets? This said, the real-world difference in image quality between 12 MP and 50 MP on the absolutely tiny sensor on that phone cameras have is likely to be surprisingly small.
Thanks guys..... The reality is it's probably not what I need but I'll try it for a few shots and take it from there.
RAW is, as the name might suggest, the raw data from the camera sensor. It is not really a photo in the usual sense, rather it's ready to be manually processed. It's kinda like an old film negative, ready to be developed.
With a regular photo, if you've got (say) the colour balance wrong and everything looks blue or orange, you're limited in how you can fix it. With RAW you can do whatever the processing in the phone could have done and much more, many times over, until you get the image you want. You can also go back to it years later and "re-take" the shot almost as your editing skills improve. RAW is the format of choice by professional photographers and enthusiasts, people who want to spend hours post-processing the perfect shot. Many people shoot in both RAW and jpg to get the best of both worlds (though if you're shooting quickly, storage write speed may become an issue).
TL;DR - if you're not post-processing in an image manipulation suite like Photoshop, and feel that you're unlikely to ever do so, RAW is pointless. I have a dSLR and I shoot exclusively in jpg because I can't be arsed with all that (and I have zero artistic skills).
My Galaxy S22 Ultra shoots at 108mp and it's gash in anything but decent lighting - more megapixels on a tiny sensor isn't always/is rarely a good thing. I usually just shoot in 12mp. In fact when I set it to RAW it shoots in 12mp, but the file is still about 20mb because of all the information it captures. I then stick it into Lightroom Mobile.
If I just want a snapshot, I leave it in jpeg and let the camera do it's stuff
It does have a trick or two up it's sleeve though. This is my caravan - there's a bottle of JD Tennessee Honey on the bed
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