Who is EXPERT RAW designed for?

[Drzewoid]

Hello,

I'm wondering who Samsung's EXPERT RAW app is designed for. The name indicates that for professionals who want to get the most out of their camera, and in practice, unfortunately, EXPERT RAW photos look terrible. Despite a good tonal range, they have a bad level of detail and they are significantly over-sharpened. They are practically unusable. In contrast, standard RAWs look very good, but do not have a good tonal range.

Why Samsung users have to choose - either image quality or tonal spread. Iphone users have both in one.

I'm hope that anyone from Samsung is reading this, because expert raw has been ridiculed on all photo forums for a long time, i think this is no hard to fix - just remove this oversharpeing and will be good. 

Greeetings

Standrard RAWEXPERT RAW

[JAMES4578]

@Drzewoid  Expert Raw is designed for more advanced photography  but do not need to be a professional. some experimentation is required, as images contain several raw exposures blended together shot should be impressive but it is easier  to edit later. 

May also wish to have a look at this thread here : https://eu.community.samsung.com/t5/galaxy-s22-series/does-anyone-know-what-happened-with-expert-raw... 

[BandOfBrothers]

Hi @Drzewoid 

I understand and appreciate what your saying.

Personally I'm just a point and click type of picture taker but i can also appreciate how expert raw options can be useful to some.

There's some information from Samsung here ï https://www.samsung.com/uk/explore/photography/3-reasons-why-you-should-shoot-with-expert-raw/ 

[AJarosz]

THIS! I find Samsung's decisions with camera apps bizarre. As OP said, why are images from the ExpertRAW app way more processed than ones from stock ones? My assumption is - a regular user uses a basic camera app, and sometimes on top of the normal day-to-day JPGs wants to play a bit more with files, so let's give some taste of RAWs - let's add RAW-like files, but a bit processed on start, so he can do some processing on his own, but not too much. And for more advanced users, let's create another app, with an expert in name, and let's give them a more powerful tool to play with. Right? Wrong. In Samsung, we have a basic app, which is able to take truly RAW files, without sharpening and denoising applied, but with limited TR and we have ExpertRAW, which produces heavy-processed JPG and heavy-processed DNGs but with great dynamic range... Why to ruin RAW files from ExpertRAW with such heavy processing? I simply can not see how someone could have thought, that this might be a good idea. I had high hopes when buying S23 Ultra for ExpertRAW. I have ended up using GCAM. I lose high resolution, but the image is so much better and more natural than what Samsung is offering, that it was quite an easy decision for me to make. 
For example - the picture was taken in my bedroom. 

And when zoomed in:

Look how bad ExpertRAW is. It is much more processed than anything else! I agree that in perfect light situations images after resizing from ExpertRAW can be ok, but I think we should expect more.  

[AJarosz]

But I think the point from @Drzewoid is, that with all that ExpertRAW is adding with multiple images blending together (greater dynamic range, much better signal-to-noise ratio) at the same time Samsung took from us benefits of RAW image (already applied both sharpening and noise reduction, so basically some processing). So with ExpertRAW you are a bit limited with your processing with decisions, than Samsugn made for you, no matter if you like it or not. 
The best solution should be to have one small toggle somewhere - "Do you want initial processing to be applied on the ExpertRAW DNG?". That would make a trick for all people. 

[Dave123456789]

I have the s22 ultra and only use expert raw for the telephoto lenses and occasionally the UW for landscape. The main camera has always given me whacked colour (especially skin tones 🤢) but I've found the expert raw app helps with details from the telephoto lenses. Just my 2 cents!

[deadpool3049]

Raw files are just that raw data images, with raw files you are able to adjust colour, tones etc. With a lot more control

[AJarosz]

True, and OP wants to be the case with ExpertRAW RAWs (DNGs). And instead, despite the Expert in the name, it delivers files with pre-applied sharpening and noise reduction, that you cannot lower (so not as adjustable as it should be). And this is my problem with this app as well. And on top of that, JPGs from it are even more processed than from the base Camera App...