Raw Power is a standalone application, but also includes extensions for both iOS' and macOS' Photos applications that give you more creative editing control over your photos. In short, it's the extension that Apple should have included with Photos. And it just got a big update.
When Apple got rid of Aperture (its Lightroom-esque non-destructive photo editing application), many fans freaked out. But eventually, most of them simply switched to Lightroom. But with Aperture's exit came a hole in the Apple photography lineup. iPhoto and its successor, Photos, was never and is still far from adequate when it comes to editing beyond what anything your grandmother would do. Thankfully, Raw Power fills that gap and expanded its capabilities today with the release of Raw Power 2.0.
Raw Power 2.0 takes your original photo and opens up additional editing possibilities. In both the iOS and macOS Photos extensions, the way you interact with it is very similar to the way you would interact with the Develop module in Lightroom. It's still slider-based, but it provides much more control with additional functions such as curves and access to specific features for any raw photo — even the ones taken on your mobile device. All of this is done while keeping your Photos library intact, so it's seamless and instantly integrates and updates with iCloud.
Separately, the standalone application offers all of the same features as well as new and potentially more useful ways to use, view, and interact with your Photos library. Again, all of this uses your existing library, so the integration is seamless.
New in the 2.0 update come features such as tabbed browsing and Dark Mode in Mojave in the standalone app. Editing-wise, there's a new camera-based preset that enables you to import photos from a variety of cameras and automatically have certain edits applied based on which cameras those images came from. Batch export enables additional efficiency when exporting images in different sizes and formats, and the center of a vignette can now be repositioned to enable a spotlight function anywhere in the photograph, much the way one might use a radial filter in Lightroom.
Raw Power 2.0 also has new, more natural tonal recovery algorithms, and with them come new names that live side-by-side with (but could replace) the highlight and shadow recovery options. Definition, Deepen, and Lighten bring more natural recovery that doesn't muddy highlights or produce gray-ish, over-HDR shadows when recovering those areas in your images. And indeed, this claim delivers.
Additional features such as preset support, manual raw preview generation (which is not done automatically on iOS), perspective control, black-and-white filters, and a number of other updates round out the new Raw Power 2.0 release, but we'll have a full review coming soon as well.
In the meantime, you can grab Raw Power 2.0 today on the Mac App Store for free if you're an existing customer. New customers can download the Mac app for $29.99 normally, but will benefit from a 10-percent introductory discount. The iOS version costs $2.99 to download and comes with a couple in-app purchases for more advanced features.
