Uncompressed camera-sensor data — CR2, NEF, ARW, and other vendor extensions that hold everything a JPEG throws away.
RAW is not one file format but a family of them — Canon's CR2 and CR3, Nikon's NEF, Sony's ARW, Fujifilm's RAF, Olympus's ORF, Panasonic's RW2, and others — each holding the largely unprocessed data straight off a camera's image sensor before the camera's own software applies sharpening, white balance, and compression. Because none of that in-camera processing has happened yet, a RAW file preserves far more highlight and shadow detail than a JPEG shot at the same moment, which is why photographers shoot RAW when they plan to edit exposure or color afterward rather than use the shot straight out of the camera. The tradeoff is size — a RAW file commonly runs five to ten times larger than the same shot saved as JPEG — and compatibility, since RAW files are unreadable in most apps, and each vendor's variant needs its own decoder. A camera RAW file almost never needs to stay in that state once the edit is done; it gets converted to JPEG, PNG, or another shareable format for the same reason JPEG exists in the first place — smaller files everything else can actually open.
iPhone, iPad, and Mac decode most major camera RAW formats natively in Photos and Preview, and professional apps like Lightroom add support for newer camera models as they're released. Many web browsers, messaging apps, and older photo software cannot open RAW files at all, regardless of brand.
A RAW file will not open in most photo viewers, messaging apps, or upload forms, and its size makes it impractical to share as-is. Converting to JPEG or another common format on-device turns an editing-stage file into one that is ready to send or post.
Filemorph can convert RAW to JPG on-device — a shareable, universally supported format once the RAW file has served its editing purpose.
Relevant operations in Filemorph:
There has never been a single standardized RAW format — Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Olympus, and Panasonic each developed their own (CR2/CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF, ORF, RW2) to match their own sensors and processing pipelines, which is why a RAW file from one camera brand often needs different software than one from another.
Converting to JPEG applies compression, so it is not lossless the way TIFF is, but Filemorph starts from the camera's full sensor data, so the converted JPEG or PNG still reflects the detail in the original RAW file rather than a re-compression of an already-processed image.
Yes. Filemorph decodes and converts CR2, NEF, ARW, RAF, ORF, RW2, and other RAW formats entirely on the iPhone or iPad, so full-resolution camera files never have to leave the device just to become a JPEG.