Lightroom App Offers RAW HDR Shooting For Three Smartphone Brands

What’s better than shooting RAW from your mobile? Adding HDR magic to it. Or at least that’s what Adobe thinks, after combining the two in the Lightroom app... but only for a couple of smartphones #mobilemagic

Lightroom in-app cam is ready to take HDR photos that are also RAW, so you don’t lose any info on the way. The update works by stitching three RAW images that are “automatically aligned, merged, deghosted, and tonemapped in the app”. The resulting photos should look as the samples uploaded by Adobe on their site and Social Media channels – high contrast, beautiful colors and not as surreal as you might imagine.

The best part is these files behave as you’d normally expect from a RAW. Besides not losing any color info from the 32-bit sized pictures, you can adjust exposure and white balance to your liking. After export, you’ll find them as DNG formats, the ones introduced by Adobe 13 years ago.

Unfortunately, not all of us with a smartphone and a Lightroom app will be able to use the feature. When it comes to iOS, only iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, iPhone SE owners are going to see the feature in the latest update. As for Android users, sorry guys, but only those of you who have last year’s Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge or Pixel and Pixel XL will be able to access it. Oh, and you have a second chance at experimenting with it if there’s an iPad Pro nearby.

Here’s how to access the RAW HDR mode:

Check out all the features that come with the update, here.