Today’s Question: Can you get the original capture from an iPhone shooting in Raw to your computer by using AirDrop? That is what I have been doing so hope I haven’t been losing quality.
Tim’s Quick Answer: You may have been losing quality. In some cases, you will need to manually choose the option to share the original file format to ensure the image is not converted to a JPEG, for example. In other cases you may need to revert adjustments first.
More Detail: The iPhone Camera app offers several possible capture format options, including JPEG and HEIC, along with Apple ProRAW for compatible iPhone models. The default option when sharing images via AirDrop is “Automatic”. However, in some cases this will cause the file to be shared with a different format than the original on your device, such as a JPEG image.
If you want to be sure to copy the photos with the same file format as they were captured in, I recommend setting the Format option to “Current” rather than “Automatic”. To do so, select the photos you want to send via AirDrop, and tap the share button. At the top of the sharing screen click the Options button. Then, in the Format section, choose “Current”.
However, there’s an additional potential issue if you’re capturing in Apple ProRAW on a compatible iPhone model. If you have edited the image on your iPhone with the Photos app you’ll need to revert the adjustments in order to send the original capture via AirDrop.
In this case I recommend creating a copy of the original ProRAW capture. To do so, tap on the photo, tap the “More” button (the three dots) at the top-right, and choose Duplicate. Then go to that duplicate photo and tap the Edit button, then tap Revert. You can then share this copy of the image using AirDrop to retain the original file format in the process.
Needless to say, Apple hasn’t made it particularly easy to ensure you always retain the original file format when sending photos via AirDrop. I therefore recommend instead connecting your iPhone to a computer via a USB cable and then using an application such as Adobe Bridge or Apple Image Capture to download the images in their original file format to your computer.
