Remove the RAW photo from a RAW+JPEG pair

Six Colors subscriber Mihir writes in with a Photos question:

How do I delete just the RAW file in a RAW+JPEG pair from my photos library on my iPad or my iPhone?

The short answer: you can’t. Not directly, anyway. And it’s not just an iOS or iPadOS limitation—macOS won’t let you do it either.

I can understand why Mihir asks. An image in RAW format can occupy several times the amount of storage as a JPEG equivalent. This has to do with the nature of the image being stored, as I explain below.

There are good reasons to capture as RAW and good reasons to discard those formats later. I’ll go through the background of RAW, and then provide a workaround to Apple’s missing piece.

Pre-post-processed camera sensor data

The RAW format used by digital cameras is often capitalized as RAW, but it’s not an acronym, nor is it a format in the traditional sense.

RAW means the file contains “raw,” or unprocessed, sensor data from your camera. To produce a JPEG, TIFF, or other format, a digital camera—including your iPhone—performs post-processing to produce an image that’s immediately usable. This can involve making significant changes to dynamic range and white balance, or even combining multiple images as a form of computational photography, as Apple does with iPhone photos.

RAW+JPEG is a common way to get a high-resolution processed version and the editable original sensor data i a single package in Photos.

This makes RAW the digital equivalent of a film negative: it’s typically larger than a post-processed file, and contains information that hasn’t yet been shaved down or squeezed into a presentable output. This gives you more flexibility when editing, but it requires processing to be usable for design, printing, or sharing.

Many cameras let you set a RAW export that includes a JPEG preview usable on its own. The JPEG is the best post-processed output from the RAW, and was originally provided because desktop (and later mobile) software didn’t support RAW or didn’t always keep up to date. Without the JPEG, importing the RAW file by itself would have been much less useful.

There’s no single RAW standard—Canon, Nikon, Sony, and others each have their own proprietary versions. It has become common to write “raw” in all caps, probably to distinguish it from the adjective form.

Because the information comes more or less directly from sensors without intermediate steps, it contains much more data that appears like noise, as the variation between adjacent sensors is retained rather than smoothed away. So even for RAW formats that compress data—not all do—the files will be larger than final images intended for viewing or printing. RAW will always be much larger than a corresponding JPEG file, as JPEG is lossy by nature, and discards some information even when you’re using the maximum setting.

After camera makers began supplying RAW output, often requiring apps they released to support it, photo-management and image-editing tools added RAW processing filters to meet the needs of digital photographers. Every professional app supports importing RAW, including Photoshop, Lightroom, Pixelmator Pro, Capture One, and DxO PhotoLab. And Photos!

Image-editing apps generally treat RAW as an import format: you view a preview, then apply changes before it is imported into an editing environment where you can work on the resulting image. Photo-management apps with built-in editing tools, like Photos and Lightroom, typically retain the original RAW image, and allow you to apply modifications on top. This provides much more flexibility in achieving your desired outcome.

One image unit, indivisible

When you import RAW+JPEG pairs into Photos, Apple treats them as a single, indivisible unit. You can choose which version to use as the basis for editing (Image: Use RAW as Original or Use JPEG as Original), but you cannot discard one half of the pair while keeping the other. Delete the image, and both files are thrown away.

Apple built Photos around a lossless workflow. This means that the original file that’s imported isn’t modified—changes are layered on top and previewed, and can be reverted back to the source image. You’d think it might engineer an override in a case like this, but apparently not.

If you need to reclaim the storage space those RAW files occupy, it’s only possible on a Mac, and it requires exporting, deleting, and re-importing.

Follow these steps if you haven’t made any modifications that you want to keep for any or all of your RAW+JPEG pairs:

Make sure to check Export IPTC as XMP to create a sidebar file with metadata you’ve added to an image.

Select the images you want to retain in JPEG format.

Choose File: Export: Export Unmodified Originals. In the export dialog, enable IPTC as XMP—this creates a sidecar file containing your metadata (titles, keywords, locations, descriptions, etc.). Without that, you’ll lose any metadata you added.

Choose a destination and click Export.

In the resulting folder, each RAW+JPEG file is represented by three files: the RAW file, the JPEG image, and an XMP sidecar.

Delete the RAW file or files from that folder.1 (If you don’t, Photos treats the two as a pair and merges them when re-importing.)

Back in Photos, delete the original RAW+JPEG pairs. These are moved to the Recently Deleted album (see below).

Reimport the folder containing just the JPEG and XMP sidecar. Photos will apply metadata from the sidecar file automatically.

Delete the folder to free up space.

The export files are split into three parts. You discard the RAW files before re-importing.

Of course, you can use the same process to jettison the JPEG and retain the RAW-formatted file.

When you delete files, if you’re sure that you have all the backups you need, you can click the Recently Deleted album in the Photos sidebar, authenticate if prompted, and click Delete All. (Or select images and click Delete X Items.) This removes the images from your Mac, iCloud Photos, and all linked devices immediately and forever. Use wisely!

Now, I noted above that this works for images that you haven’t modified in Photos. As part of its lossless workflow, exporting unmodified originals means you lose any changes unless you follow these steps:

Before step 5 above, return to each modified image in Photos.

The re-imported JPEG image should appear next to the RAW+JPEG file, because of the timestamp, which is preserved from the XMP data. Select the RAW+JPEG file, and press Command-Shift-C (Image: Copy Edits). This copies any modifications.

Now select the re-imported JPEG, and press Command-Shift-V (Image: Paste Edits).2 This applies those changes.

Proceed to delete the original RAW+JPEG file.

Because of how iCloud Photos syncs images, you may want to delete all the images you intended to first, and make sure those images have moved to the Recently Deleted folder on your devices before you re-import them.

While Mihir specifically asked about iOS and iPadOS, the export-delete-reimport workflow requires the Finder and file management capabilities that only macOS provides.

For more expert advice on Photos, you should obtain a copy of Jason Snell’s Take Control of Photos, which addresses all of the app’s features and vagaries.

A feature request, not a bug

People have been asking Apple to add a “split RAW+JPEG pair” or “delete RAW only” feature for many years, and the company hasn’t budged, likely because of its focus on lossless workflows.

In the meantime, if you find storing RAW+JPEG is taking you too close to a full volume, you could shoot RAW only on your camera, and let Photos generate a JPEG preview. If you want to convert to JPEG, you can export it from the RAW file and re-import it. Or you might switch between RAW+JPEG, RAW, and JPEG shooting profiles on your camera, as many support user-defined modes that include output formats.

[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use /glenn in our subscriber-only Discord community.]

While camera makers use several different RAW file extensions, these files should appear as “raw” under the Kind column in the Finder. If not, common extensions include .cr2, .cr3, .nef, .raf, .arw, and .dng. Failing that, look for any file that doesn’t end with .jpg/.jpeg or .xmp. ↩

You may have Command-Shift-V set for another shortcut. I use it with PasteBot. In which case, you can use the Edit: Paste Edits menu item or create a distinct shortcut for it. ↩