Range Camera App Promises Natural-Looking iPhone Photos Without Fuss

Feb 21, 2025

Jeremy Gray

A rock climber ascends a steep cliff on the left, with a desert landscape in the background. On the right, a person rides a bicycle along a beach at sunset. An icon with an abstract eye design is centered between the two scenes.

Photographer and app developer Drew Mylrea released Range Camera, a new iPhone camera app that promises more natural-looking photos and streamlined RAW image editing.

Range Camera is Mylrea’s second iPhone app, following No RAW, which lets photographers quickly delete the heavy-duty RAW files they no longer need from their iPhone. Speaking of getting rid of RAW files, Range Camera handles that problem, too, by not duplicating files and not creating extra RAW files.

Of course, many passionate mobile photographers still want all the flexibility of RAW images, mainly because default smartphone image processing often looks too sharp and artificial.

Image showing four promotional panels for a photography app. From left to right: "Best app for NATURAL Photos," "EASY Raw Captures," "Edit FASTER," "The BEST COLOR." Images include phones with photos and labels highlighting features.

“I fell out of love with the iPhone camera because of over-processing. Specifically: Over sharpening and the fusion of multiple images (and tone mapping) that leaves no room for overexposed or underexposed parts of the image,” Mylrea tells PetaPixel.

“I was also deeply unhappy with the color of the iPhone images — I love film stocks and digital cameras that have dense rich colors, and the iPhone seems to have been going in the opposite direction.”

A large, cartoonish gorilla sculpture holding a sign towers over a bustling city street filled with people. Flanked by tall buildings, including one with a "CityWalk" sign. The sky is partly cloudy.

Vertical sign reading "Orpheum" in large white letters against a red background, attached to the side of a building. The building has several windows, and the sky is clear and blue.

Tall building with illuminated sign at the top against a dusk sky with pink and blue hues. Nearby, a second building has warmly lit windows. Tree branches partially frame the scene on the right.

It’s not an iPhone camera problem — the technology is fantastic — it’s a software issue that many developers aim to tackle in varying ways. In Range Camera’s case, the app taps into Apple’s image signal processing pipeline before all the sharpening and tone-mapping occurs. There are no HDR or excessive noise reduction algorithms here.

Range uses either Bayer RAW and ProRAW image capture depending upon the specific iPhone model and lighting conditions. For phones that support ProRAW, which are the most recent generations of iPhones, Range intelligently selects between Bayer and ProRAW to achieve the best results. Mylrea says Bayer RAW works best in ideal lighting conditions, while ProRAW offers unique benefits in low-light scenarios.

A person in a teal jacket holds leashes for three small dogs indoors. They're near a door on a tiled floor, with one dog wearing a pink harness. A large abstract painting hangs on the wall beside them.

Rock climbers ascend a large sandstone boulder in a sunny desert landscape. One climber is high on the rock face, another is mid-climb, and two are on the ground observing. A rope and climbing gear lie nearby.

A dimly lit room with a modern aesthetic. A desk with a lamp, laptop, and drink can is in the foreground. A partially open door reveals sunlight streaming in from a window in the adjacent room, creating a warm glow and shadows on the floor.

“ProRAW low-light images look fantastic compared to their Bayer RAW counterparts,” the photographer says. For phones that don’t have ProRAW, Range should work well in many cases, but Mylrea notes that low-light shots will be grainier.

“Range uses a custom process that preserves highlight data and makes colors more dense while protecting skin tones. This is saved as a RAW + JPG pair to your camera roll. If you’re happy and want to leave it there… great!” he says.

A person in a red jacket walks three dogs on leashes along a wide, sandy beach. The sky is overcast with dark clouds, and the ocean is visible in the background.

Close-up of a vintage yellow taxi with an "Off Duty" sign on top. The sign is flanked by two orange lights. The taxi's window shows the steering wheel and part of the dashboard. An urban street is slightly visible in the background.

A person with glasses and a black puffer jacket stands on a wet sidewalk at night, under a tree with yellowing leaves. Cars are parked nearby, and city lights are visible in the background.

However, Range goes beyond better and more natural-looking straight-from-the-camera photos. The app includes an editing space, the Range Darkroom. Here, photographers can perform exposure, highlight, temperature, and saturation adjustments to their RAW images. Once the user is content with the look of their shot, Range saves it as a lightweight HEIC and puts the unnecessary RAW data into the trash, where it is recoverable for 30 days.

Mylrea describes Range’s default “look” as similar to a Fujifilm point-and-shoot camera. “Colors are a little denser. We want images to look as natural as possible.”

“The goal with Range was to create an app that you will want to use for every iPhone photo you take,” Mylrea explains. “It needed to be no fuss; point and shoot.”

A large building painted light blue under a clear sky. It features numerous windows and a central fire escape. The words "834 South Broadway ANJAC Fashion Bl" are visible on the upper part of the building.

A person with long hair smiles while holding a small dog at a park. They are wearing layered coats, and the dog is in a harness. The background features a dirt path, trees, and a fence under a clear blue sky.

“For me, other natural photo apps are great for certain use cases, but have tradeoffs. They would shoot RAW images, and there was no way to delete the RAW data so your image library would balloon in size. Or the app would give you a fully baked HEIC with no customization later on. Or you’d get a RAW but then need to open lightroom, save a file, and delete the original later…it was too much. And all of the other apps would have overexposed highlights out of the box.”

“With Range, I wanted to remove all the friction standing in the way of making a great shot,” he continues. To that end, Range’s Darkroom works one shot after another. Photographers can quickly go through the photos they shot, make edits, and save them without using external apps or wasting a bunch of their phone’s storage.

A person on a bicycle is blurred in the foreground, while a cloudy sky with a pink and orange sunset is visible in the background. There are a few people walking on the beach, and a lifeguard tower is seen at a distance.

A brick building with colorful graffiti stands behind a parking lot. The lot has multiple pay stations and a "Park & Pay" sign. Overhead wires crisscross the sky, and the area is bathed in warm, late-afternoon light.

A happy dog with its tongue out sits on a person's lap. The person is wearing a colorful shirt with patterns. A parked car is visible in the background.

“It’s super fast, you don’t have to jump through hoops, and you’re left with really great photos,” Mylrea concludes.

Range Camera: Pricing and Availability

Range Camera is available to download for free from the Apple App Store. However, it is only free to use for the first 20 captures. After this, users must subscribe for $1.99 monthly or $19.99 per year. The app requires an iPhone 12 or newer.

Image credits: Drew Mylrea, Range Camera