De-sharpen Apple ProRAW photos please!

What features would you like to see in Pixelmator Photo?
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2021-12-31 01:24:36

Most of my ProRAW images shot on my iPhone 12 Pro Max look overly sharp both in Apple Photos and Pixelmator Photo. The only way I’ve been able to deal with this is to import them into Lightroom and turn down the sharpening adjustment. Below is a zoom of a shot I took today. Those edges hurt. Given that I can de-sharpen in LR I’m assuming there’s something going on in Apple’s ProRAW profile or something. Pretty hard to give these a filmic look with all those edges.

Image
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2022-01-03 14:00:41

Hey dantaylr. If I'm not mistaken, it looks like your iPhone is using Smart HDR here. HDR shooting can be automatically enabled for certain RAW images if it's determined that it will be effective for that particular photo. You can try turning off automatic Smart HDR and see if that helps. Learn how in this article here.
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2022-01-03 18:43:40

by Aurelija 2022-01-03 22:00:41 Hey dantaylr. If I'm not mistaken, it looks like your iPhone is using Smart HDR here. HDR shooting can be automatically enabled for certain RAW images if it's determined that it will be effective for that particular photo. You can try turning off automatic Smart HDR and see if that helps. Learn how in this article here.
Thanks for the reply. Upon checking my settings I do have SmartHDR enabled. Does that affect RAW shooting though? I did a quick side-by-side test with it on and off and didn’t notice any significant sharpening difference with a RAW file.
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2022-01-18 15:42:58

According to Apple documentation, ProRAW does work with Smart HDR (and Deep Fusion) but there's not much info on how the photo engine chooses which photos are fit for these additional optimizations and which ones aren't. Perhaps it'd be worth contacting Apple Support about this for a more in-depth commentary or browsing through Apple support forums. For instance, I've found a similar issue (though not with RAW images, I think) discussed in this thread here.
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2022-03-07 04:28:39

by Aurelija 2022-01-18 23:42:58 According to Apple documentation, ProRAW does work with Smart HDR (and Deep Fusion) but there's not much info on how the photo engine chooses which photos are fit for these additional optimizations and which ones aren't. Perhaps it'd be worth contacting Apple Support about this for a more in-depth commentary or browsing through Apple support forums. For instance, I've found a similar issue (though not with RAW images, I think) discussed in this thread here.
I’m not sure if this is related to that to be honest. Here’s an example I shot the other day zoomed in to 300% in the Darkroom app vs Pixelmator Photo. I’m assuming Pixelmator Photo isn’t utilizing the preview image for editing but it looks slightly like it. Image Image
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2022-03-10 13:58:36

OK, I could be wrong here. I guess the differences could also be caused by the different RAW engines you run the images through. Darkroom and Lightroom, for instance, use their own, custom RAW engines, so they may be handling Apple ProRAW images differently compared to Photos and Pixelmator Photo which both use the same Apple RAW engine. I know for sure that slight color and contrast shifts are pretty common in different RAW engines, I'm just not sure whether image sharpness could also be affected.

If we could test some sample Apple ProRAW files from your iPhone ourselves, we could probably tell for sure. You can do so at support@pixelmator.com.
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2022-03-10 16:40:07

by Aurelija 2022-03-10 21:58:36 OK, I could be wrong here. I guess the differences could also be caused by the different RAW engines you run the images through. Darkroom and Lightroom, for instance, use their own, custom RAW engines, so they may be handling Apple ProRAW images differently compared to Photos and Pixelmator Photo which both use the same Apple RAW engine. I know for sure that slight color and contrast shifts are pretty common in different RAW engines, I'm just not sure whether image sharpness could also be affected.

If we could test some sample Apple ProRAW files from your iPhone ourselves, we could probably tell for sure. You can do so at support@pixelmator.com.
Sent a few over. Thanks!