Google working on bringing RAW photos to more third-party Android camera apps

An upcoming update of the Jetpack CameraX library will include support for capturing RAW photos, which could help many Android apps with camera functionality gain support for RAW photography.

Smartphone photography is getting more popular as phones become more and more capable of delivering great photos. Although many regular users are pleased with the default photos their phones produce, there will always be those who'd like to do a little editing before sharing.

For them, and for photography enthusiasts, the RAW photo format exists. RAW photos are not compressed and don't have processing applied to them, which makes them easier to edit. On top of that, they usually save more information than regular JPEG files, which allows for more precise editing to be done to them (for example you can edit white balance, exposure, sharpness, and more on a RAW photo).

Having this much info in the file makes the RAW file quite heavy on storage, and some RAW files can be huge. That's why JPEG exists, as it compresses photos to take less space. But of course, having the compressed files means some info is lost and editing options are fewer.

Many Android apps with camera functionality don't support RAW photography. A change coming with an update to the Jetpack CameraX library can help in this situation. Right now, camera apps that use the Android Camera2 API can capture RAW files. But apps using the Jetpack CameraX library cannot.

The Jetpack CameraX library is aimed at apps that need access to the camera but not as their main functionality, such as, for example, social media apps. The Camera2 API is used by full-fledged camera apps and is the more complicated API.

Many developers who don't need all the advanced camera controls that Camera2 offers, opt for CameraX as it's simpler. However, Google has slowly been adding some nice features to CameraX as well. It already brought Ultra HDR capture support to CameraX. Now, RAW capture support is coming. The files will be saved in the Adobe DNG format, a widely used format for RAW images.

We don't know when this update will come to the library yet. I think it's curious that a library for apps that don't focus on the camera capabilities would add RAW support, but many apps are using this library so maybe having the option available won't be bad.

I'm always in for having more options ready. And this could possibly mean that more third-party apps would get RAW capture support, which is pretty cool.

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