What is a .ARW file?
ARW is Sony’s camera RAW format, holding unprocessed sensor data from Sony Alpha cameras. Opened in Sony Imaging Edge or Adobe Lightroom.
- Did you know
- Sony introduced ARW with its Alpha camera line in 2006.
- ARW stands for Alpha RAW, named after Sony’s Alpha camera line that the format debuted with.
- The format is based on the TIFF/EP standard, extended with Sony-specific tags for sensor metadata and compression.
- Sony’s first DSLR, the Alpha A100, inherited much of its technology from Konica Minolta’s camera division, which Sony had taken over.
- ARW has gone through several revisions, with later versions adding more efficient delta encoding and lossless compression options.
- What Analyser shows you
- Open camera RAW files from Sony (ARW), Canon (CR2, CR3, CRW), Nikon (NEF, NRW), Fujifilm X-Trans (RAF), Sigma Foveon (X3F), Olympus (ORF), Panasonic (RW2), Pentax (PEF), Adobe DNG and many more. Reads full EXIF and lens data, the true sensor resolution, GPS and histograms, recovers the Sony and Nikon shutter actuation count, and develops the RAW - decoding the sensor to a full-resolution image, or extracting the embedded preview when a true demosaic is not available.
- Open a .ARW file
- Drag a .ARW file onto the Analyser home page (or tap to pick one). It opens entirely in your browser - nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and it works offline once installed.