What is a Raw Image? The best Raw image editing software 2021

You've probably heard over and over that you should shoot in RAW. But do you know why it is so important? And what does it really mean for your image? What are the commonly used Raw image editing software? Let's go with Sadesign to find out!

Firstly…

What is a RAW image?

A Raw photo is simply a digital image file stored on your camera or phone's memory card. These are images that have not been processed, compressed or encoded by the image sensor after each shot.

To create a photo with a Raw file is quite simple, as long as you press the camera, the image will be received by the sensor and automatically saved into a composite information file. With this file, it will not be affected by factors such as white balance, exposure, or color correction from the camera, you can adjust it through software on your computer.

With smartphones being born today, manufacturers have put tools to support Raw photography on the camera's default application. Therefore, you do not need a camera, you can also own quality raw images.

What are the advantages of Shooting in RAW format?

I'll quickly go over some of the main advantages of shooting in RAW, so you know why you should learn how to set up your camera to shoot in RAW.

Keep all the image data

The first advantage to mention when shooting in Raw is that you won't lose any precious image data.

Example: You take an image of the sky that may be too bright or the subject too dark. When shooting in IPG it is very difficult to do that, because the image is basically in its final state and it allows only a small amount of editing. As for the Raw file, it already has a large amount of image information available, which means you can also restore overly bright skies by reducing their brightness or increasing the shadows to make them brighter.

Adjust white balance

White balance is what we refer to the color tone of the image, and it depends on the light source nguồn

When you take a photo, the camera often has to try and figure out the tone of the light, so that your photo doesn't look too blue or too yellow, and this is done with the white balance setting.

When you shoot in JPG format, the camera must figure out this white balance and apply it to the image. With RAW, it's much easier to change the white balance after the fact, which means it's a lot easier to adjust the color tone of the image during post-processing, and " edit" the photo to make it look more natural and similar to reality.

Sharpness and noise adjustment

Simply with a Raw image, adjusting the noise and sharpness in post-processing will bring a better result, looking sharper and brighter than the JPG format.

In addition, with Raw images, you can also export to any space you want.

The best Raw photo editing software on phones today

To meet the needs of users with the most beautiful and quality photos, there are now many good Raw image editing software such as:

Adobe Photoshop Express

This is a very familiar part and is currently the most used free photo editing software today. This software also has 2 versions that are for Mobile and for PC.

The Mobile version does not support as many editing tools as the computer version. However, Adobe still equips Photoshop Express with different editing features, from easy to difficult, from basic to advanced such as contrast, light, ...

With this software, it will allow users to use it for free, but if you want more advanced features, you have to pay to buy more advanced features.

Photo Mate R2 Software

This is an editing software for electronic devices running on Android operating system. With this software, it will help you process and analyze image information while keeping the same size of image files imported from phones or digital cameras. The software easily controls the parameters of light, WB, ..

The highlight of this software is that it is equipped with a very good noise reduction feature, it has the ability to edit on a certain area or layer of the image. However, the software will cost you about 9.49 USD, but it brings very high efficiency for image editing.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

This software also has 2 versions: Mobile and computer, just like Photoshop, the mobile version will have more limited tools and customization than the computer version. If you do not edit photos too detailed, use the mobile version and just change the basic parameters such as: light, EV, IOS, color, filter, ... With this software is one of the tools. Simplest editing tool, utility that is easy to use, very suitable for those who want simple photo editing.

Lightroom's outstanding advantage is that the level of management and image arrangement along with a variety of filters is no different from the computer version. With photo editing without meticulous or complicated details, this software is the best photo editing application available today. However, this software also has a limitation that the publisher only allows users to try it out for a period of 30 days, if you want to continue using it, you have to pay for Adobe's home packages by month or year.

Snapseed Software

A very famous part for the Smartphone is the Snapseed app, with the upgrades, this software has a feature that allows editing Raw images and basic features such as adjusting brightness, saturation, White balance. In addition, this software also has many other outstanding features such as adding details to images, inserting images, cropping, rotating, editing images, inserting text or automatically beautifying images so that it is in harmony with the layout. .

In addition, the application also stands out when allowing users to edit images in certain areas without affecting the entire photo. Besides free Raw image editing applications such as Photoshop Express, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Snapseed software is also free software that you should use.

RawVision

This is the part that I want to introduce to you, an application that stands out for being able to edit Raw images and includes the necessary image editing tools with a raw image. With this software you can use the Demo version, if you like it, you can buy the complete version for 5.48 USD.

Each software has its own standout features, if you can't decide then our advice is to download one of those apps, most of them are free or also have a free trial and see which one suits you best.

Hopefully through this article you will understand more about Raw image with its advantages as well as the software that supports Raw image editing on Smartphone.

If you have any questions in this article, leave a comment below, SaDesign Retouching team will help you.