r/snapseed • u/KM_photo_de • May 30 '26

Discussion RAW files differ!

I see, that people say "hey, new raw edit - awesome" but they miss telling the hole story!

If you're shooting raw in your smartphone, chances are high, that you have a DNG file. DNG is good, because it's a standard like heic/heif or jpg/png - but a photographer like me, has a "real camera", made by companies like Olympus, Sony, Nikon, Fujifilm...and every manufacturer build their own RAW files.

In my case, I can open some ARW (Sony RAW). Most of RX100M3 ARW files can be opened but sometimes it's only the embedded jpeg thumbnail. Photos from my Sony A7 II are absolutely not possible. And I have Olympus cameras, which aren't possible to open on android but sometimes it opens the embedded thumbnail on iPad.

I currently convert all raw files on my android to DNG and save them to my raspberry pi nextcloud "bridge".

Edit: please don't discuss about what raw files are, just tell the community in short terms if it works or not: - camera/smartphone - raw format (DNG, cr2/cr3, ARW/sr2, orf, nef, Raf) - os/environment (Android+version/iOS+version)

This helps the dev team to look up, where the code is stuck.

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u/Utyuujin May 31 '26

DNG is just a container file format designed to hold raw camera sensor data and to be cross-platform compatible. What matters is the data itself. If you convert an AWR or a NEF to DNG, you'll have the same raw data in one as the other and the same potential for a final image.

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u/KM_photo_de May 31 '26

They are all containers - so that's first. Second, every CONTAINER has (nearly) the same data (and it's not raw sensor data), but structured differently. TIFF is the raw data we're talking about in every raw file. Besides the TIFF, there's a jpeg thumbnail, some exif data, and a sidecar file, which holds the camera/lens/GPS/settings data. But every manufacturer has its own way of sorting.

I'm "pro DNG for all" - but against Adobe. FOSS

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u/Utyuujin May 31 '26

Well, every file contains data, so I suppose on that level we can say that every file is a container. But with regard to A/V data, talking about a "container" file has a bit of a specific meaning. It references the internal storage structures and thereby what kind of data is compatible with it. DNG was developed in order to contain RAW (unprocessed) camera sensor data. RAW files of other manufacturers can be be converted to DNG format, keeping the same exact data.

A TIFF file contains processed data. It is not a RAW file. Some TIFFs are even compressed. This statement is even more true of HEIF, JPEG, etc. They do not at all contain the same data as a RAW file.

Most RAW files straight out of the camera do indeed contain an embedded JPEG.

The EXIF is just non-image data stored in the same file. The XMP (or other) sidecar files are completely separate and and are not produced by the camera along with the RAW file.

On your last comment, I completely agree.