iPhone 16 Pro lets users capture ProRAW photos in JPEG-XL format

As a JPEG XL fanboy, I was going to upgrade my iPhone 12 Pro Max to the 16 Pro based on the fact that it would support the hot new format. Even though JPEG XL is supported across Apple’s operating systems, only the 16 Pro’s are capable of capturing JPEG-XL images. Were I able to take pictures, it would make my image processing pipeline so much easier.

Well, 9to5Mac has more details and it turns out this support is just for ProRaw images which will use the new DNG 1.7 file format which adds support for JPEG XL. Note that Samsung also uses DNG 1.7 for it’s Expert RAW format.

After a long time slacking, Apple is taking media formats seriously. I really hope this encourages Google to adopt it for Android and Chrome, especially since their own research team heavily contributed to the format’s development.