The Galaxy S22 Ultra is only a few months away and Samsung is still empowering users to make the most out of their Galaxy S21 Ultra. The 2021 Samsung flagship already sports powerful camera hardware and image processing in the Android devices camp. The Pro Mode on Galaxy smartphones is one of the best camera apps that offer manual mode functionality. And Samsung has made it even better. The South Korean tech giant released a brand new camera app for it which could help it capture even better photos.
Galaxy Expert RAW is the name of Samsung’s new camera app. The new app can capture 16-bit RAW format photos and allows manual control of which camera is used, including all four rear cameras, as the name implies. Tron revealed the app’s details in a Tweet, but Samsung also published a community post about it. Instead of relying on automatic systems to get things just right, a user can control ISO sensitivity, shutter speed, EV adjustment, white balance, and focus etc. This is similar to Pro mode in the default camera app, but the stock app is only limited to the primary and ultrawide cameras. On the other hand, the Galaxy Expert RAW app’s Pro Mode allows you to shoot with all 4 lenses.
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Instead of the standard 12-bit per channel, Samsung’s new Galaxy Expert RAW app can capture images with 16 bits per colour channel. While 12 bits allows for 4,096 intensity levels, 16 bits dramatically expand that range to 65,536. Each of the three colour channels, red, green, and blue, has the same value. This will result in significantly larger file sizes, which may be worth it for images with a wide range of hues and dynamic range. While the extra colour depth may not be noticeable in most photos, it may come in handy when photographing difficult subjects such as holiday lights, rainbows, flower displays, and other situations where colour and light are too demanding and deliver contrasty pictures with the standard app. You’d also need to use Adobe Lightroom or a similar that support DNG editing & HDR support. The high dynamic range data will be stripped off from the RAW files if you edit pictures in apps similar to Google Photos.
For the time being, it appears to be limited to the S21 Ultra and Android 12 devices. The Galaxy Expert RAW app is still in the works, but it should be available soon on Samsung’s Galaxy App Store. If you want to install the beta app, head over here.
Also read: Galaxy S21 Ultra 6 Month Review: Sustained Brilliance
