Decreased ProRaw quality on 17 Pro series

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Level 1

4 points

Decreased ProRaw quality on 17 Pro series

Has anyone else noticed the image quality decrease when shooting 48 mpx ProRaw on the iPhone 17 Pro series compared to older iPhones? When i compare my 17 Pro Max with my 16 Pro (shooting ProRaw 48, main lens) and review the files in Lightroom, the 17 Pro Max’s image has significantly less detail and the whole image looks soft and a bit like some painting (result of more aggressive noise reduction - weird because the 16 Pro file has already basically zero noise, yet manages to retain a lot more detail). It seems like a solid downgrade. I even remember shooting with my 16 Pro indoor and being impressed by the ProRaw file and how detailed it looked after playing around with it in Lightroom considering that it was indoor. Now when trying to shoot with my 17 Pro Max in the same room, I was disappointed. The files were basically unusable and had less detail than regular 24 mpx jpegs straight from camera (which was never the case on the 16 Pro - ProRaws always had more detail there).

12 mpx ProRaw (including night mode) seems intact. The decrease in quality is only visible in 48 mpx mode. It also affects 48 mpx jpeg/heif images.

I hope this isn’t intentional and it’ll get fixed with a software update.

iPhone 17 Pro Max, iOS 26

Posted on Nov 18, 2025 10:02 AM

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Answer 1

—thomas— Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 19, 2025 12:07 PM in response to Jeff Donald

Sure! I didn’t even know you can post pictures here. This issue doesn’t affect a particular lens, it’s on all of them. I believe it’s a software processing thing that affects the 48 mpx ProRaw. Not 12 mpx ProRaw. I quickly took this photo in the kitchen now to demonstrate it (ProRaw 48). It’s relatively low light, but not enough for the camera app to switch to night mode (set to auto). I had both phones on tripod, used a separate BT shutter and tapped to focus on both to make it fair. The lenses were clean too. Exported with lightroom using the same exact settings. Here are links to the original photos (too big to post here):

16 Pro: https://ibb.co/cc4cZ2YV

17 Pro Max: https://ibb.co/84D8X9WN

Here are some cropped in images to make it easier. You can see a noticeable difference in sharpness and fine detail on all of the 3 crops.

I’ll definitely take more photos indoors and outdoors later, whenever I find a day when I don’t come home late in the evening when it’s dark. I took comparison pictures in the past few days where the difference was even more apparent but I deleted them all, so I’ll try to replicate that.

I’ve also seen this post on MacRumors recently where other people seem to experience the same issue. Look at the sample images posted in the first reply under the post (17 pro vs 14 pro in this case) - that’s the exact thing I see in every shot. Here’s a link to it: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/unimpressed-with-17-series-camera-quality.2467290/

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Answer 2

Jeff Donald

Level 8

44,868 points

Nov 18, 2025 10:54 AM in response to —thomas—

Your experience is not what I’m experiencing with my iPhone 17 Pro Max. I shot with the 16 Pro Max for a year and my wife is shooting with it now. You don’t reference any specific lens/camera. Generally, these issues can be isolated to a specific sensor, but vague post and no examples to look at with the EXIF data displayed makes me tend to believe it’s a hardware issue or perhaps user error. Care to share a few images that illustrate the challenges you’re experiencing?

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