EDIT HELP


Introduction

RAW Power gives you unparalleled access to the RAW decoder built into iOS. For example, it has great tools for recovering detail in the waves (red box in the image below) that would be lost in a JPEG. This help file will give you more information on RAW Power's editing tools.



Edits are synched through iCloud Photo Library. You can continue editing on another iOS device or even on the Mac, using RAW Power for Mac (available on the Mac App Store).

Press the Done button in the upper right corner of the screen to save your edits to the iOS Photo Library. If you use iCloud Photo Library, all changes you make with RAW Power will be synchronized through iCloud as well.


Histogram

In the histogram shown below, you can see four circles. These are clipping indicators.


If they are lit, then there are clipped pixels in the image. A clipped pixel is brighter than the maximum that a JPEG can store. The gray circle indicates clipped luminance data, while the colored circles indicate clipped red, green, or blue channels. You can tap these circles to show a “Hot and Cold Pixel Overlay” to see which pixels are clipped. An example overlay is displayed below.


When the Hot and Cold Pixel Overlay is displayed, red denotes a “hot” pixel which has at least one color channel greater than 1.0. Blue indicates a “cold” pixel that is black (all channels are 0.0). Tap the clipping indicator to turn off hot pixel mode.


Tools

Here is where you will find useful miscellaneous features.


There are tools to rotate and flip images, as well as show and hide the histogram or copy / paste adjustments between images.

The Auto Histogram shows and hides as needed when making adjustments in portrait mode. You can also auto enhance images. Images that have faces will be "face-balanced" rather than white balanced. If you do not like the result of Face balancing, you can tap the Face button to disable it. RAW Power can also auto white balance. That control is in the White Balance adjustment.

Resetting adjustments removes all RAW Power edits. Tap Reorder to change the order of the adjustments in the user interface to put the ones you use most at the front.


RAW Processing

RAW Processing is the heart of RAW Power’s editing tools. Below is a summary of the many sliders that you can use to finely control Apple's RAW decoder.


Set Boost to 0.0 to get a flatter, more “RAW-like,” result. For over-exposed images, set Boost to 0.50 or less, and then use Recovery in the Tone adjustment.

Black Boost controls the boost adjustment in dark or shadow areas.

Use Black Point to set the darkest part of the image (what the decoder calls the “black floor”).

Luma Noise and Color Noise controls the different types of digital noise in an image. Color Noise tends to look more unnatural. Use the Detail slider when applying large amounts of noise reduction.

Moiré reduces the effect of moiré on the image. Moiré is an interference pattern that appears in very finely detailed areas.

RAW Sharpen is dependent on the camera and the exposure settings of the image.

RAW Contrast provides a local contrast effect.

Gamut Map ensures that colors do not exceed the RAW Gamut. Turn this off if you want to manage out of range colors yourself.

TIP: When using sliders, double-tapping them resets them to their default value. Tap the plus button for additional commands.


White Balance

The White Balance adjustment adjusts the color balance of an image. RAWs can be white-balanced to a greater extent than JPEGs.


Drag the Temperature slider to the left to make a bluer (cooler) image, or to the right for a redder (warmer) image. You can use the RAW Power Auto White Balance button or tap on the sampler (blue box) to white balance manually. When using the sampler, tap or drag on the image to automatically color balance it, making sure to pick a grayish part in the image, not a white one. Note: Auto White Balance can be saved into a preset to allow you to color balance many images at once in batch mode.


LUTs (Looks)

LUTs provide a quick way to adjust your image to simulate film stock or the color grading of a movie. RAW Power includes a set of LUTs, and you can import your own as well. LUTs that you import can be seen in the Files app in the RAW Power folder. You can create folders inside that folder to organize your LUTs.



Tone

Because RAW images contain pixel data brighter than white, you can use the sliders in Tone to recover highlights very effectively (especially when combined with Boost in RAW Processing).


The Highlight slider just affects bright pixels; Shadows just affects the dark pixels. Recovery acts like Exposure, but only affects the brightest pixels. The colored button (see blue box) shows a multi-channel clipping overlay when you drag the sliders in Tone.


Basics

The Basics adjustment provides simple controls for brightening and darkening, adding or removing contrast, and saturating colors in images.


Vibrancy is a selective saturation that doesn’t affect skin tones.


Depth Effect

The Depth Effect is available for images shot with a dual camera system (such as the iPhone 7 Plus, or iPhone 11). It provides the ability to adjust the highlights and the shadows of the background and foreground independently.


The first pair of sliders control the foreground and the second pair of sliders controls the background. The last slider controls the depth mask, which is calculated by the dual camera system. By adjusting the depth mask, you can control what is “foreground” and what is “background”. Changes to the Depth Mask can be subtle, so when manipulating the mask it is helpful to use the Depth Overlay. The overlay is enabled with the control at the top (see blue box). When the Depth Overlay is engaged, the image shifts to a black and white representation (see example below).


Black indicates background and white indicates foreground. Move the Depth mask slider to see the effect on the mask.


Enhance

Enhance provides three very powerful sliders for improving your images.


Clarity is a local contrast (or sharpening) adjustment. Deepen and Lighten are alternatives to standard highlights and shadows sliders. Unlike typical highlights and shadows sliders, Deepen and Lighten maintain contrast, providing a very pleasing image.


Levels

Levels is an easy way to adjust the color range of an image. You can also use Auto Black or Auto RGB to correct an image with Levels automatically. If you work with Levels manually, you can adjust the black point, white point, and midpoint.



Curves

Curves is a very precise tool for adjusting individual color channels. Tap to add a point, double-tap to delete a point.


The top two buttons are called Auto-Black and Auto-RGB. Auto-Black set the black and white points of the gray curve to correct low-contrast images. Auto-RGB does the same thing but for the red, green, and blue channels. As a result, it corrects contrast problems, and also corrects color shifts. In Settings, you can control the clip amounts used when apply Auto Curves. Also, if you make a preset with Auto Curves, you can apply Auto Curves in batch mode to correct many images at once.

Below that is the channel selector. Tap a channel to display its curve.

The Options are advanced uses of Curves — please see the user manual.

The Samplers allow you to set the black, gray, and white points for the selected curve, or add a point to the curve. Tap the sampler and tap or drag on the image.

Use the controls below the curve to set the black and white point manually.

HSL Color

HSL Color allows you to selectively adjust hues in your image without affecting others. You can select one of the nine built-in hues, or use the target control to work with a combination of hues.


Tap to select one of the preset hues. Then you can shift the hue, or adjust saturation and luminance. Luminance will affect the brightness of the color. The Range slider controls how many different hues will be affected by the adjustment. Increase the range to include more hues; decrease the range to limit the number of hues. The last control is the Target button. If you tap on that, you can select a custom hue and adjust it by dragging directly on the image. RAW Power will adjust the image by determining a precise blend of the built-in hues.


Channel Mixer

The Channel mixer lets you swap channels, mix color from one channel into another, or boost the color of a channel. It is an easy way to tint image or make extreme changes to them.



Black and White

Black and White is a simple monochrome mixer which combines red, green, and blue color channels into a monochromatic image.


By default, Black and White uses a luminance formula for mixing the colors. You can use the sliders, or use the Filters menu to select alternative ratios. Many of the filters in the menu are designed to simulate the effect of color filters placed in front of a lens.


Sharpen

The Sharpen adjustment provides a simple luminance-based sharpener which provides good results with minimal effort.



Chromatic Aberration

Chromatic Aberration is a defect that occurs when light strikes the camera's sensor at an angle, causing the red, green, and blue to strike separate parts of the sensor. This defect is most noticeable at high contrast edges, especially toward the edges of an image.


To correct Chromatic Aberration, use the sliders to counteract the shifting of color channels.


Crop and Straighten

The Crop and Straighten adjustment allows you to specify the aspect ratio of the image, and crop it precisely.


You can also straighten using a slider or draw a line on the image using the straighten tool (left button in the blue box). Tap the box next to “Crop” to enable or disable the adjustment. This way you can easily see the image with and without Crop and Straighten applied. You can specify a custom aspect ratio, use a built-in aspect ratios, or crop free-form (unconstrained). Click the “double arrow” button (between the "2" and "3" boxes) to switch the crop from vertical to horizontal or vice-versa.


Perspective

The Perspective adjustment provides a simple way to correct images that shot at an angle to the subject, either vertically or horizontally (or both).


Perspective automatically crops the image as well, using the original image's aspect ratio. If you do not want this effect (or want it lessened), use the Scale slider. The image will appear as a trapezoid, which is the result of rotating the image in 3D. You can then crop the image yourself using the Crop and Straighten adjustment.


Vignette

Vignette darkens the edges of the image to draw the eye toward the subject.


Most vignette adjustments draw the eye to the center of the image. This is fine in some cases, but if the subject is offset (as happens often with rule-of-thirds compositions), then a center-based vignette is not a good choice. The vignette in RAW Power provides a controllable center point (see blue box). Tap the center point control and then tap on the image (or drag) to select your desired center.