thanks for sharing @Rob11 and welcome!
1 Like
How do you deal with lens correction and defringing?
I have not found free software that is able to convert the Apple ‘Raw’ files correctly. I have tried a lot.
I have used ProCamera on the iPhone, their raw files can be read but are of lower quality.
I am not restricted to free software, so Adobe DNG convertor is doing the job.
Such a pain what Apple has done…
Sure, but (1) this forum focuses on FOSS and (2) I wasn’t replying directly to you.
Yes, this forum focussed on FOSS, unfortunately- to my knowledge - there not a good FOSS solution for reading iPhone raw files…
So, hence, I presented a non-FOSS solution. That doesn’t mean I like it…
I prefer FOSS, but for me it is not a law…
I thought the main issue with Apple ProRAW was JXL compression - isn’t that a solved issue at this point for Darktable?
Or did Apple do some additional nonstandard crud?
Edit: OK I misread something. DNG 1.7 support is still missing.
Btw, did anyone try dnglab again on these recently? v0.7.1 might support JXL already? (While v0.7.2 w/ the fix for 10b LJPEG is still not released…)
A while ago I tried a similar app (Halide); it also has a basic RAW format without multi-exposure computational photographic processing techniques.
But I was often disappointed with these photos. Even though the newer iPhone sensors (the main one anyway) have a true 12 MP resolution, the sensor itself is tiny. And the dynamic range is limited. I found it ok for daylight photos (but nothing special), and unsuitable in low-light conditions due to excessive noise and low contrast.
If memory serves me, I think an iPhone 16 sensor is around 1/4 the area of a micro-4/3 sensor. And you will find plenty of people who complain that MFT is too small for their needs. Personally I’m very happy with my MFT camera, and on iPhone I use computational photography (but unfortunately I do not use these phone photos in dt).
YMMV. Welcome to the forum!
1 Like
Yes, I did that today… Installed dnglab 0.7.1 using homebrew on my Mac and I have converted iPhone 12 Pro, ProRes Raw images correctly. The dngs are very underexposed, but they are usable in darktable!
Couple notes:
- No lens correction profiles are detected by darktable
- I had to manual enter the exposure value (+4.9 !!) to get correct exposure
- I also had to change the white balance, as the default white balance was completely off.
But this is the situation when I use the Adobe DNG Converter as well
For a free RAW (DNG) app, try Flannl as a starting point (it does lack geotag and has a start screen you need to dismiss) Fotorgear is also great with film simulation and simulated bokeh… all free. There’s also moment which I’m pretty comfortable with. Also Proseezion which is the smallest app (under 1mb) that comes with its own processing pipeline if you want to output jpeg instead of raw, Camac is available (free comes with a 30s cooldown) with the best quality you can squeeze out of iPhone with auto hdr stacking and super resolution stacking. There might be more. I began as a iPhone dng editing person, but I just stuck with Camac/proseezion now as I’m too lazy to edit photos, plus Camac supporting JXL/avif/jpegli output, if you dislike native app processing which makes zoom photos especially ugly then you’ll have to try these two apps’ non raw mode. Now all apps except moment and no I’ve never used halide because I’m broke 
I mostly use cable connection for transferring photos as Linux generally work great with iPhone. Getting familiar with files app on iPhone is also helpful as Linux can only access files in the “application specific folders” or the DCIM. Plus as extra try using Blackmagic camera app with open gate resolution with ProRes (Proxy) (avoid rec2020) and reencode later to get the most unprocessed videos out of iPhone if you don’t have Apple log support.
And yes all apps mentioned have raw dng support
are free to download
I have tried several of alternative camera app’s. Most of them do indeed have their own DNG raw format that can be read with darktable. But I have also noticed there is some a difference in quality between those apps and the default iOS camera app with ProRes. And if these app use the ProRes format then we are back to the same problem: opening them in darktable.
if that is the case then unfortunately there’s only two routes, dng raw or proraw. You can also try camac with SR mode which helps in noise reduction.