Lightroom Now Supports Sony's New RAW Format

credits: Sony

Adobe has rolled out Lightroom Classic 15.2.1, and with it comes something a lot of Sony users have been waiting for, expanded RAW support for the Sony A7 V. The update adds compatibility for compressed and compressed HQ RAW files, which Adobe says has been one of the most requested features. Lossless compressed RAW was already supported, so this update basically fills in the missing pieces. Lightroom (CC) is expected to get the same support in its next update, likely in April.

Compressed RAW matters quite a bit for certain types of photography, especially sports, action, and wildlife. These files are smaller than lossless compressed RAW, which means you can fit more photos on a memory card and clear the camera buffer faster during continuous shooting. That can make a real difference when you are dealing with long bursts or shooting thousands of images in a session. The trade-off is some loss in image data, but in most cases it is only noticeable in extreme situations, like very high-contrast scenes or heavy editing.

There are still a few limitations. The official Sony camera profiles do not appear to be available yet in Adobe’s profile browser, so you will need to rely on options like Adobe Colour or custom ICC profiles for now. Outside of that, Adobe continues to push further into AI features across its apps, including the recently introduced text- and voice-based assistant in Photoshop. This update also arrives shortly after Sony’s first firmware update for the A7 V, which addressed a RAW preview issue, so support on both the camera and software side is starting to catch up.