Apple launches RAW 9 engine in iOS 27 for improved photo processing

Apple announced that iOS 27 will include a new system‑level RAW image‑processing engine, dubbed RAW 9. The update uses a tiled Core ML model that runs on the Apple Neural Engine to perform demosaicing and denoising on‑device, delivering sharper detail and less noise even when re‑processing older RAW files.

RAW 9 supports nearly 800 third‑party camera models through Core Image, and Apple demonstrated its advantages with examples from a Sony Alpha 7 II, a Canon 5D Mark III, and a Fujifilm X‑T5. In each case the new engine produced clearer textures, more accurate colors and better legibility of fine text compared with the previous RAW 8 algorithm. Developers can enable RAW 9 via the Core Image API and optimise performance for editing and export.

The enhancement is positioned as Apple’s “biggest RAW update yet,” aimed at photographers who need greater flexibility and higher quality when editing raw sensor data on iPhone and iPad devices.