Was the Uncompressed RAW feature been removed?

[UltimaGaina]

Can someone clarify why the Samsung S20 series (including S24U) stopped generating uncompressed RAW files sometime in Q1 2023?

In Pro mode, we now have JPEG compression in a DNG container. It is a 12-bit JPEG.

Expert RAW has the same JPEG compression (on 16 bits, probably because of HDR) for S22U and S23U, while on S24U it shows as "Unknown (52546)" compression. According to an article I found on Samsung India, it is said that this is a new JPEG XL compression.

Why not offer the option to get again (as we had before Q1 2023) truly uncompressed mosaiced RAW, which works with the Lightroom Denoise AI algorithm, instead of the current demosaiced compressed Linear RAW, which doesn't.

[UltimaGaina]

Check Exif Viewer on Play Store. I am also using ExifToolGUI, when I'm transfering my files to my PC.

[rawshooter]

This is not how a raw file should look like Samsung, what are you doing?

Source: https://community.adobe.com/t5/camera-raw-discussions/samsung-s24u-expertraw-looks-like-8bit-jpg/td-...

And yes having the ProMode dng compatible with Adobes de-noise option would be a dream.

[UltimaGaina]

It's not 8bit JPEG it's 16bit JPEG XL, as documented by Samsung in this article. But is supercompressed, making RAW editing much more destructive than it could be.
https://r2.community.samsung.com/t5/CamCyclopedia/JPEG-XL-Image-Codec/ba-p/15356525

[rawshooter]

Does not really matter if it still looks like 8 bit (Does not say it is, says it looks like)

[UltimaGaina]

Yes, it's very likely that the 16 bits are obtained by stacking several 8 bit JPEGs through the HDR algorithm. The intermediate HDR file can even be on 32bits and then compressed to 16 through JPEG XL.
So if the input was on 8 bits, the output will not be better, except for the extra dynamic range.

Garbage in, Garbage out.

[rawshooter]

Just checked an old S22U dng file, it's also not compatible with Lightrooms de-noise.

[UltimaGaina]

Yes, as I mentioned on my posts above, Samsung SILENTLY switched from uncompressed RAW, to JPEG compression for all S20 series, in Q1 2023.

Funny enough, my ~5 years old Samsung 10 5G is still able to generate uncompressed RAW compatible with Lighroom Denoise AI (while my shiny new S24U is not), because it never received that infamous firmware update.

If you go back to S22U DNGs shot in 2022, you will see that those DNGs were uncompressed and compatible with Lightroom Denoise AI.
One more time, pay attention to the difference between these 2 DNGs, shot with S22U late 2022 vs mid 2023:

[rawshooter]

My S22U shots are from 2022, I sold it when I got the S23U.

[UltimaGaina]

See the exif screenshot above. That uncompresed S22U DNG is from December 2022.

[rawshooter]

Ha I forgot, I converted them all to compressed dngs in Lightroom because those 50MP files are so large. Not knowing Adobe would finally improve their De-Noise routine in the future. Well cant revert that.