About ARW (Sony Alpha RAW)
ARW is the RAW format written by Sony Alpha cameras — the a7 and a9 mirrorless lines, the a6000 series, and the earlier SLT and DSLR models. The name stands for Alpha RAW, and like most camera RAW types the format is TIFF-based. Depending on the body and its settings, files are stored uncompressed, lossless compressed, or in Sony's older lossy compressed mode, at 12 or 14 bits per channel.
You keep ARW files when you want full control in editing — recovering skies, fixing white balance, pulling detail out of shadows — and you convert them the moment you need to share a shot, print at a kiosk, or view it anywhere without RAW support. That conversion happens entirely in your browser here: free, no signup, and the file never leaves your machine. Two honest caveats: this site reads ARW but cannot create it, and the neutral RAW rendering may not reproduce the exact colors of Sony's Imaging Edge software.
Strengths
- Full sensor data with wide dynamic range — Sony sensors are known for shadow recovery
- Lossless compressed option on newer bodies keeps files smaller with no data loss
- Widely supported by major photo editors and RAW processors
Limitations
- Unreadable in most non-photography software without conversion first
- The older lossy compressed mode can show artifacts in extreme edits
- Cannot be created here — conversion works from ARW only
- Neutral rendering may shift colors relative to Sony's own processing
The compressed RAW question Sony shooters argue about
For years Sony offered only two choices: uncompressed 14-bit RAW, or a lossy compressed mode that halved the file size. That lossy mode applies tone-curve quantisation and a delta encoding across neighbouring pixels, and while it is invisible in ordinary images, it produces a specific and well-documented artifact — posterised banding along very high-contrast edges, most visible when recovering a bright sky behind a dark silhouette. Astrophotographers and landscape shooters noticed, and complained loudly for years.
Sony eventually added lossless compressed RAW to newer bodies, which is the option to use if you have it: genuinely bit-identical data, in files meaningfully smaller than uncompressed. Recent cameras also offer lossless compressed at reduced resolutions, useful when you want RAW latitude without full-resolution file sizes. If your body only offers the old two options and you shoot high-contrast scenes you intend to push hard, uncompressed is the safer setting.
Dynamic range, and what it means for your converted file
Sony sensors built a reputation on shadow recovery — the ability to underexpose to protect highlights, then lift the shadows in editing without the noise and colour blotching that would ruin the same manoeuvre on many other cameras. That latitude lives entirely in the RAW file. It is a property of the 14-bit sensor readout, and it exists only until something converts that data to 8 bits.
This is worth understanding before converting. If you intend to make exposure adjustments, make them in a RAW editor while the latitude is still there, then export. Converting a flat-looking ARW straight to JPEG and trying to fix the exposure afterwards means working with 256 levels per channel instead of 16,384 — the recovery that would have been effortless in RAW turns into banding and noise. Convert as the last step, not the first.
Frequently asked questions
- Which Sony cameras produce ARW files?
- All Alpha-series cameras shooting RAW: the a7 and a7R/a7S families, the a9 and a1, the APS-C a6000 line, the ZV series, and the older SLT and Minolta-descended DSLRs. The extension has stayed the same across all of them even though the internal structure has changed considerably over the years.
- Should I shoot compressed or uncompressed ARW?
- If your camera offers lossless compressed, use it — bit-identical data in a smaller file, with no trade-off. If your only choices are uncompressed and the older lossy compressed mode, lossy is fine for general shooting but can show banding along high-contrast edges when you push the file hard, so uncompressed is safer for landscape, astro, and heavy highlight recovery.
- Why does my converted ARW look flat compared to the camera preview?
- The preview is a processed JPEG embedded in the file, with Sony’s Creative Style, contrast, and sharpening applied. The RAW data underneath is deliberately neutral, and conversion here renders that data rather than extracting the preview. A flat starting point is what RAW is for — it is the room you have to make your own adjustments.
- Can this site create ARW files?
- No. ARW holds unprocessed readings from a specific Sony sensor, so it can only meaningfully come from the camera. Conversion runs one way: from ARW into JPEG, PNG, WebP, and other viewable formats.