Fans of the iPhone’s powerful camera are no strangers to snapping photos – and with the right approach, it’s easy to use the iPhone as a selfie machine, Instagram tool, or vlogging hub.
But there’s an issue that’s becoming more common as users continue to experiment with their photo settings, and this blunder could fill up an iPhone 12 Pro’s storage in no time flat.
What’s Happening?
The core of the issue is iPhone 12 Pro owners changing their image file settings unknowingly or without fully thinking through the consequences.
The iPhone 12 Pro and the iOS 14.3 update added one exciting new feature to the camera.
Choosing an image format will change how a photo is saved onto the iPhone right after you take it. The newest option is called Apple ProRAW.
- Users who are experimenting with different image formats can go into Settings.
- Choose Camera.
- And select Formats to see their options.
Here we’ll get into the primary issue – when eager amateur photographers look up the best settings to take their digital photos; they’ll find that a lot of professional photographers use the original RAW format on their DSLRs.
There’s a good reason for this – the RAW format was created for photos to capture and preserve as much raw data as possible while being compatible with a variety of editing software.
RAW provides incredible amounts of raw detail that photographers utilize and manipulate, finding the nuance in particular photos to create incredibly life-like or even whimsical images. The Apple ProRAW format seeks this same goal and creates huge image files as a result (~25MB).
The catch is that professional photographers use dedicated storage to manage their image files, and tend to get rid of unwanted files after a session to clear room as they start working on editing.
If you are only using local iPhone storage (or iCloud storage), then the ProRAW format can take an incredible amount of storage space for just a few files. If iPhone users leave the setting on, then their storage will reach maximum limits in no time.
Here are five things everyone should know about switching to this format for their iPhone photos.
- RAW formats like ProRAW are primarily designed for in-depth editing and lossless data files that can be used for extreme detail, even in unique lighting situations.
- If you don’t plan on doing that much editing to a photo, it may not be worth using ProRAW. Instead, let the iPhone do the editing for you with its standard settings.
- You’ll know if your iPhone is set to the ProRAW standard. It will appear as a small RAW icon in the Camera app.
- The best way to use ProRAW for the amateur photographer is to turn it on for one or two particularly special photos, then toggle it off again before you forget. Apple makes this very easy; you don’t have to go back into Settings again. Just tap on the RAW icon in the Camera app, and you can turn it off or back on again as desired.
- In Settings, you can go to General and iPhone Storage to review your current storage at any time. Here, you will also find an option to Review Large Attachments, which will allow you to check any photos you’ve previously sent in Messages, then remove them if they were much larger than you intended, freeing up more storage.