Samsung presented its Expert Raw application in beta version at the end of 2021; currently it is only available for the S21 Ultra. The app lets you control manual exposure settings for the four rear cameras, which is nice, but the coolest thing it lets you do is shoot multi-frame RAW files. Here's what you need to know about Expert RAW – what it is, why it's useful and how to use it.
ContentsWhat is Multi-frame RAW?Which Samsung phones offer Expert RAW?How do you shoot in Expert RAW?How do you edit Expert RAW images?The short answer is that it's RAW but better. In general, RAW shooting saves more data than a JPEG image file, which is a huge advantage if you prefer to fine-tune things like white balance and exposure photo editing software. JPEGs are smaller and more easily shareable, but these types of settings are "built-in" to save space, and they're much less flexible for post-processing. Many smartphones offer a traditional RAW shooting mode, but with one major drawback compared to shooting a standard JPEG image.
When you take a photo in your phone's native camera app, the resulting JPEG (or HEIC) file often includes data from multiple images that were captured very quickly when you pressed on the trigger. This allows the phone to create a single image file with a wider dynamic range, making a backlit subject look brighter without adding a lot of ugly noise, for example.
Traditional RAW mode on a smartphone (or any camera) captures a single image which is more flexible for editing than a typical JPEG, but loses the computational benefits that come with the multi-frame treatment you would get with JPEG. This makes shooting RAW on a smartphone pointless, to put it bluntly. Smartphones have very small sensors and lenses compared to traditional cameras, and they use these computational tricks to capture more image data and compensate for this size disadvantage. Therefore, it's usually best to let your phone do its thing and take a JPEG.
Multi-frame RAW, which several phone manufacturers (including Apple) have introduced, makes RAW much more useful, especially when taking a picture with your phone. You get the best of both worlds:multiple image data saved in a single file, plus great flexibility for editing.
Photo by Allison Johnson / I/O Means
The Galaxy S22 series, including the standard S22, S22 Plus, and S22 Ultra models, all support Expert RAW from February 25. Samsung plans to extend support to some older models, but there are certain hardware requirements a phone must meet in order to run Expert RAW, so only a handful of other high-end devices will offer it. This listing includes:
The feature is not included in the standard Samsung Camera app; it's actually an entirely separate app that needs to be downloaded from the Galaxy Store. Open the Store app and search for Expert RAW. Once you've downloaded it and agreed to give it access to your camera and microphone, you're ready to start shooting multi-frame RAW files.
The Expert RAW interface is similar to the standard camera app's Pro mode, including letter icons at the bottom of the screen that indicate 0.6x, 1x lens options and 3x. When you press the shutter button, you will see text prompting you to hold the phone still while the phone captures several images. Related:Expert RAW isn't something you'll want to use for moving subjects.
The resulting files are large – around 30MB to 40MB each in my tests. There's a high-efficiency RAW option that you can activate if you tap the settings icon on the shooting screen, but it only saved me a few MB per frame. Unless you bought a phone with massive storage, you'll want to stick with using Expert RAW when it really makes a difference, not all the time.
Expert RAW files are saved as standard DNG files, so you can integrate them with any RAW processing software of your choice. Samsung includes a Lightroom shortcut in the Expert RAW app, but if you want to go that route, you'll need to download Lightroom from the Galaxy Store and sign in with an Adobe account. Downloading from the Galaxy Store entitles you to a two-month free trial, but after that you'll have to pay the $119 annual subscription.
In any case, you can tap the share icon while reviewing your image to take your photo in a free app like Snapseed or save it to cloud storage for edit it on a desktop.
With your image in the editing software of your choice, you will have more freedom to push back shadows or remove highlights than with a standard RAW file. I took a standard RAW and a multi-frame RAW of the same backlit scene for comparison, and the difference is significant. Pushing the shadow slider all the way up +100 on both photos, there are light bands in the standard RAW, while the Expert RAW looks much cleaner.
So when shooting a scene with a wide dynamic range, this is definitely the best RAW mode to use. Don't just be too happy if you want to use up your phone's storage.
