Picture Batch ARW to JPG
ARW to JPG
ARW is what every Sony Alpha and RX body writes, and almost nothing outside photo software will open one. This page decodes the sensor data properly — unpacking Sony's own compression, interpolating the colour filter array, applying the white balance recorded when you pressed the shutter — and writes an ordinary JPEG that opens everywhere, without the file leaving your device.
Drop ARW images here
ARW files — or any of PNG, JPEG, WebP, AVIF, BMP, ICO, TIFF, GIF or camera raw (CR2, CR3, NEF, DNG, RAF, ORF, RW2). Everything runs on this device.
Your images never leave this device. They are decoded and re-encoded by your own browser, and the security policy on every page blocks this site from sending them anywhere.
Lossy, no transparency, opens absolutely everywhere, small for photographs.
The standard range for photographs. Hard to distinguish from the original.
Images keep their original dimensions.
JPEG cannot store transparency. Nothing in the queue currently has transparent pixels, so this has no effect yet.
Exif is carried across where both formats can hold it. Nothing currently in the queue has any.
Every pixel gets its two missing colours interpolated from its neighbours, at the full sensor resolution. The slower and more detailed option.
The value your camera recorded when the shutter fired — what you saw on the back of the camera.
Camera, lens, exposure and capture time are written into the JPEG when those fields are present. The file details show whether GPS data exists, but coordinates are deliberately not written, and colour comes out as sRGB.
What happens to your image
Expect a much smaller file than a lossless source, at the cost of some detail.
| Property | Outcome |
|---|---|
| Transparency | Preserved: ARW images have no transparency to lose. |
| Image quality | Partly preserved: JPEG is lossy: the image is re-compressed and detail is discarded to make the file smaller. The quality control decides how much. |
| Colour | Partly preserved: Converted to sRGB. Decoding an image colour-manages it into the browser's own space, so the output is sRGB and is left untagged, which every viewer reads as sRGB. A wide-gamut source is reported before conversion. |
| Exif metadata | Preserved: Carried across if you leave metadata switched on, or removed completely if you switch it off. Camera, date and any location tag travel together. |
| Orientation | Preserved: Applied to the pixels, and the tag is reset to upright afterwards so nothing rotates the image a second time. |
Sony compresses its raw files, and that shapes what you get
Most Sony bodies write compressed ARW by default: fourteen bits of sensor data squeezed into eleven through a delta encoding applied across small groups of pixels. It is not lossless. On ordinary photographs it is invisible, and on high-contrast edges in deep shadow it can produce faint stepping that pixel-peepers have written a great deal about.
Newer bodies offer lossless compressed and uncompressed modes as well. This decoder supports many of those variants, subject to the camera model being known; an unsupported combination fails with its own message rather than producing a renamed or preview-only result.
The camera and lens come with it
Sony stores the body, the lens, the exposure and the capture time in its own maker notes rather than in a portable metadata block, so a converter that simply copies metadata across finds nothing to copy. This one reads those fields and assembles a standard metadata block from them, so the JPEG knows which camera and lens took it, at what shutter speed, aperture and ISO.
GPS is the deliberate exception. The file details show when location data is present, but coordinates are not written into the output, because a converted JPEG is usually about to be shared.
Sensor detail, and when to use half of it
A 42-megapixel A7R file needs around 700 MB of working memory to demosaic at full resolution, and a browser tab that is asked for more than it can have is not slowed down — it is discarded. So the memory arithmetic is done from the real sensor dimensions before anything is allocated, and a file that will not fit is decoded at half resolution with an explanation rather than being attempted and lost.
You can also choose half resolution yourself. It takes each group of four photosites as one output pixel, which needs no colour interpolation at all: several times faster, a quarter of the memory, and still 10 megapixels from a 42-megapixel body. For anything headed to a screen it is often the better choice.
If something goes wrong
"The sensor data in this file could not be decoded."
Common causes are a camera or compression mode newer than this decoder, an incomplete copy, or a damaged file.
What to do: Adobe's free DNG Converter can often make a newer proprietary raw more widely readable. The message names the camera when that metadata could be read.
The image looks noisier than the camera's own JPEG.
Your camera applies noise reduction when it makes a JPEG. This is the sensor data with none applied.
What to do: Nothing to fix in the converter. For high-ISO files where noise matters, develop them in raw software that has a noise reduction stage.
A file converts, but the row says the camera's embedded preview was used.
The sensor data could not be unpacked, so the camera's own preview stood in for it.
What to do: That result is a picture, but it is not a conversion of your raw data, and it is labelled that way everywhere it appears. Treat it as a rescue rather than an output you would archive.
Questions
Is ARW the same as Sony RAW?
Yes. ARW is the extension Sony uses for its raw files across the Alpha and RX ranges. Older Sony and Minolta bodies wrote SR2, SRF and MRW, which are also read here.
What quality should I use for JPEG output?
Ninety is the default on this page, higher than the usual eighty-five, because a raw file is worth converting well and you have no second chance at the detail. Above about ninety-five the files grow quickly for changes almost nobody can see.
Can I keep the raw files and just get JPEGs?
That is all this does. Your originals are never modified, moved or uploaded — they are read into memory, decoded, and the tab forgets them when you close it.