Photos

Your iPhone shoots HEIC. Your archive is probably JPEG. Both are first-class citizens. For everything else, if Photos.app can open it, so can we.

Also fully supported

DNG, CR2, ARW, NEF, and other camera RAW formats are not supported. Raza Photos is built for your photo library — the files your iPhone and Photos.app produce — not a professional RAW workflow.

Videos

The video your iPhone recorded plays. The movie you downloaded from the internet probably won't — and that's intentional. Raza Photos is not a media player.

Codecs inside those containers

MKV, AVI, WMV, and other formats used for downloaded movies or video editing are not supported. If a format is not natively handled by Apple's AVFoundation framework, it will not play.

HDR

On a capable display — iPhone 12 and later, MacBook Pro with Liquid Retina XDR, Pro Display XDR — your HDR photos and videos appear exactly as bright and vivid as when you captured them.

HDR photos are not stored as HDR. Each file contains a standard SDR image — which looks perfectly normal on every screen — plus a hidden gain map: a set of instructions for how to boost specific areas when shown on a capable display.

On a standard screen, the gain map is ignored. On an HDR screen, it lights the photo up to its full captured brightness. One file, two presentations, every screen looks correct.

Raza Photos hands the complete file — gain map and all — directly to Apple's display framework. We decode nothing. The display does the work.

Apple Adaptive HDR HEIC with an embedded Apple gain map. Every photo from iPhone 12 and later.
Ultra HDR JPEG JPEG with an ISO 21496-1 gain map. iPhone cameras since iOS 17.
Dolby Vision Dynamic HDR metadata in MOV/MP4. Shot on iPhone 12 Pro and later.
HDR10 Static HDR metadata in video files.
HLG Hybrid Log-Gamma, used in broadcast HDR video.

Live Photos

Live Photos are not really a file format — they are two files that belong together. Here is the honest explanation of how that works.

When you take a Live Photo, your iPhone captures 1.5 seconds of video before and after the shutter moment, alongside the still. Inside Apple Photos you see one item. On disk it is always two separate files: a HEIC for the still and a MOV for the motion, linked by a shared identifier hidden in the metadata of both.

To keep that link intact when exporting, use File → Export Unmodified Originals in Apple Photos. A regular export produces only the still.

File → Export Unmodified Originals gives you two files per Live Photo: IMG_1234.HEIC and IMG_1234.MOV, side by side in the same folder.

When it imports the folder it reads the shared Live Photo identifier from the HEIC's Apple MakerNote metadata and from the MOV's QuickTime content identifier. Files with a matching ID are recognised as a pair.

The MOV disappears from your grid — not shown as a separate video. The HEIC becomes a Live Photo. Tap or hover and the motion plays, exactly as it does in Apple Photos.

No special folder structure, no naming convention required. As long as both files share a folder and the metadata identifier is intact, pairing is automatic.

The MOV companion is probably missing. This happens when you copy only the HEIC, or export without Unmodified Originals. Re-export using File → Export Unmodified Originals and import again.