iPhone and iPad apps will be able to shoot RAW photos with iOS 10

Good news, iPhone-toting photo lovers: RAW photo shooting support is coming to iOS 10.

(Wondering what the heck a “RAW” photo is? It’s any file type that stores an image in its rawest form, sans compression and pre-processing. The upside: you’ve got a lot more data to work with, allowing for a much greater degree of editing flexibility in post processing — hence why pro photographers tend to shoot in RAW. The downside: the files tend to be pretty damned big.)

Eagle-eyed watchers spotted a passing mention of RAW photo editing on a slide during yesterday’s keynote, but not a word was said about it on stage.

The functionality was confirmed in a WWDC workshop this afternoon, though, where a few details were laid out:

Third party developers will be able to shoot and store raw photos, but it’s something they’ll have to add to their apps — it won’t just suddenly start working across all your apps when you update to iOS 10.

It’ll work with the rear camera only

As with many DSLRs, iOS can handle shooting in RAW and JPEG simultaneously

It’ll be available to apps running on the iPhone 6s, 6s Plus, SE, and the 9.7” iPad

RAW photos will be stored in Adobe’s Digital Negative (DNG) file format

Alas, no word yet on if/how Apple plans to support RAW photos within their own Camera app.