RAW

RAW is an umbrella term for the unprocessed sensor data captured directly by a digital camera before any in-camera JPEG conversion. Each manufacturer uses a proprietary variant: Canon uses CR2/CR3, Nikon uses NEF, Sony uses ARW. Adobe's DNG (Digital Negative) is a standardized open alternative that many cameras and applications support. Because RAW files hold the full dynamic range from the sensor, they give photographers maximum flexibility in post-processing at the cost of much larger file sizes than JPEG.

File extensions	.raw, .cr2, .cr3, .nef, .arw, .dng
MIME type	image/x-raw
Developer	Various camera manufacturers / Adobe (DNG)
First released	1990
Category	Images
Open standard	No (proprietary)

What opens RAW files

• Adobe Lightroom / Camera Raw
• Capture One
• RawTherapee
• Apple Photos (macOS)

Browse File Formats

Reference details for 53 file formats — extensions, MIME types, what opens each one, and how they convert.

7Z Archives ABW Documents AI Images AVIF Images AZW3 E-books BMP Images CSS Other CSV Spreadsheets DjVu E-books DOC Documents DOCX Documents EPS Images EPUB E-books FB2 E-books GIF Images GZ Archives HEIC Images HTML Documents ICO Images ISO Archives JPG Images JSON Other Keynote Presentations Markdown Documents MOBI E-books Numbers Spreadsheets ODP Presentations ODS Spreadsheets ODT Documents OTF Other Pages Documents PDF Documents PNG Images PPT Presentations PPTX Presentations PSD Images RAR Archives RAW Images RTF Documents SVG Images TAR Archives TeX / LaTeX Documents TIFF Images TSV Spreadsheets TTF Other TXT Documents WebP Images WOFF / WOFF2 Other WPD Documents XLS Spreadsheets XLSX Spreadsheets XML Documents ZIP Archives