Toolman

.raw — Camera Raw Image

Image image/x-raw

What a .raw file is

Unprocessed sensor data straight from a camera, before demosaicing, white balance and tone curves are applied. Manufacturer-specific: .CR2/.CR3 (Canon), .NEF (Nikon), .ARW (Sony), .DNG (open standard).

How to open it

Lightroom, Capture One, darktable, RawTherapee, or the operating system's photo app.

Worth knowing

Raw holds far more highlight and shadow detail than JPEG, which is why it is worth the file size when the exposure might need rescuing.

How to identify a .raw file

A file's extension is only its name — renaming a.png to a.raw changes nothing inside. What software actually reads is the magic number, the first few bytes of the file.

Signaturevaries by manufacturer
MIME typeimage/x-raw
CategoryImage

CR2 starts "II*", NEF and ARW are TIFF-based, DNG uses the TIFF signature.

# what is this file really?
file mystery.raw

# look at the first bytes yourself
xxd mystery.raw | head -2
head -c 16 mystery.raw | xxd

# Windows PowerShell
Get-Content mystery.raw -AsByteStream -TotalCount 16 | Format-Hex

Frequently asked questions

What is a .raw file?

Unprocessed sensor data straight from a camera, before demosaicing, white balance and tone curves are applied. Manufacturer-specific: .CR2/.CR3 (Canon), .NEF (Nikon), .ARW (Sony), .DNG (open standard).

How do I open a .raw file?

Lightroom, Capture One, darktable, RawTherapee, or the operating system's photo app.

Is .raw safe to open?

Yes. A .raw file is data, not code — opening one cannot execute anything by itself.

Can I change a file's extension to convert it?

No. Renaming changes the label, not the bytes. The one place it appears to work is between formats that genuinely share a container — renaming .docx to .zip works because a DOCX is a ZIP. Everything else needs a real converter.

Other image formats

Other formats

All file formats