Merge Raw Photos Into One Better Raw File
The missing computational photography tools for your DSLR or mirrorless camera: night mode, frame stacking, super-resolution, and multiple exposure. Fully integrated into Lightroom Classic. Every merge works on real sensor data and comes back as a DNG with your raw editing flexibility fully intact. Fast and free for Mac and Windows.
What is MergeRAW?
MergeRAW combines multiple raw photos into a single DNG. Average a burst for a cleaner image, assemble a pixel shift set, merge an exposure bracket, stack the night sky, or erase moving objects with a median blend — all without leaving Lightroom Classic.
What sets it apart is what you get back: a real raw file. Merging happens directly on raw sensor data, and the resulting DNG keeps every bit of raw editing flexibility — white balance, camera profiles, highlight recovery — and imports straight back into your catalog, ready to develop.
Bonus Tools: MergeRAW also includes Remove Built-in Profile, Edit Raw in Photoshop, and Fix IR PDAF Banding for even more workflow flexibility.
Easy-to-use interface integrated directly into Lightroom Classic
What Can It Do?
Frame Averaging
Average a burst of exposures to slash noise: four ISO 64 frames give you an effective ISO 16, pushing full frame well into medium format territory. Sharpen harder, print larger — without Photoshop's slow Smart Object stacking.
Pixel Shift
Merges pixel shift sequences from Nikon, Sony, Canon, Pentax, and Fujifilm cameras, including the half-pixel high-resolution modes. Better quality than the camera makers' own desktop tools with faster processing, plus deghosting to rescue Bayer sets where something moved.
Night Mode
Why does your camera need a tripod when your phone doesn't? Fire a handheld burst and stack it into one clean low-light shot: blurry frames are detected and dropped automatically.
Landscape Astrophotography
Sky Tracking stacks untracked night-sky exposures aligned on the moving stars — pinpoint stars with full-stack noise reduction, satellite trails removed automatically. Freeze Foreground keeps the landscape sharp in the same merge.
Multiple Exposure Effects
Median blend makes people walking through your scene simply disappear. Lighten stacks star trails, fireworks, and light painting onto a dark background; Darken does the reverse. In-camera multiple exposure on bodies like the Nikon Z series saves only a JPEG — MergeRAW gives you the raw file your camera won't.
Focus Stacking (Experimental)
Merge a focus-bracketed stack into one front-to-back sharp raw file. Every part of the image comes from the frames where it's truly in focus, with alignment built for the focus breathing between slices — in-camera bracketing or manual rail, handheld or tripod.
Under the Hood
Raw In, Raw Out
Merging works directly on raw sensor data, before demosaicing whenever possible, and the output is a maximum quality DNG with all the editing flexibility of the originals.
Sub-Pixel Auto Align
Automatic alignment corrects shift, rotation, and perspective between frames with sub-pixel accuracy, and moving subjects don't throw it off.
Exposure Matching
Every frame is exposure-matched automatically before merging. No other pixel shift software addresses the fundamental challenge that slight aperture variation or lighting drift between exposures shows up as pattern noise and dramatically reduces dynamic range.
Lightning Fast
Multi-threaded and native on Apple Silicon, Intel, and Windows Arm64. Merges finish in seconds — no more waiting for Photoshop to load layers.
Sensor Cleanup & Art Repro
Dark frame subtraction and automatic Hot Pixel Removal keep long exposures clean. Flat field correction evens out illumination and color shift for museum-quality reproduction work. You'll find these, along with batch processing, in the Advanced merge dialog.
Bonus Tools Included
Remove Built-In Profile
Some lens manufacturers mandate applying a lens profile for certain lenses. This can introduce pattern noise when doing image stacking in other tools. This plugin creates a DNG from your raw file with the profile removed.
Learn MoreEdit Raw in Photoshop
Develops your RAW file into a TIFF and opens it in Photoshop. When you hit save, it converts back to a DNG file that's 1/3 the size of a TIFF. Perfect for running tools like BackscatterXTerminator at any point in your workflow while keeping full raw editing flexibility.
Learn MoreFix IR PDAF Banding
Full-spectrum and infrared-converted cameras show periodic horizontal row banding because the factory phase-detect autofocus (PDAF) gain calibration assumes visible light. This tool detects the affected rows from the image itself and repairs them—camera-agnostic, and a safe no-op on images without banding.
Learn MoreWhat Photographers Are Saying
“Fast, easy, does exactly what it says and no annoying pop ups. Your raw stacking tools are so easy and work with all my cameras. I no longer have to do the round-trip to Photoshop. The Remove Built-in Profile tool — super useful! I have paid for software that is not half as good as what you have here.”
“I tried your focus-stacking mode for the first time yesterday on a difficult subject — a plant with many overlapping leaves and intersecting lines — and the result was impressive. MergeRAW stacked up well (pun intended) against Helicon Focus in all three of Helicon’s rendering methods.”
Download
What's New in 1.6.x
- New Advanced merge dialog — batch modes, hot pixel removal, and calibration frames in one place, while the basic dialog stays simple
- Process Each Photo — apply dark frame and flat field corrections to a whole sequence and get one fixed-up DNG per photo
- Flat field frames from your selection — mark flats by file, folder, color, or stars just like darks; several flats are combined automatically
- Batch merges without the popup — Merge All Photos, Merge Each Stack, or Process Each Photo, chosen right in the dialog
Quick Install Guide
Download
Download the installer for your platform — macOS (.pkg) or Windows (.exe).
Run Installer
Open the downloaded installer and follow the setup wizard. If your system warns about an unidentified developer, choose Open (macOS) or More info → Run anyway (Windows).
Restart Lightroom
Restart Lightroom Classic to load the plugins.
Start Merging
Find MergeRAW in File → Plug-in Extras → Ryan's Raw Tools or right-click on images and look for Ryan's Raw Tools in the Export menu.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is MergeRAW an HDR app?
While MergeRAW isn't a traditional HDR app, it increases your dynamic range by reducing noise and preserving shadow detail. For bracketed exposures within about 4 stops on a steady tripod, MergeRAW delivers benefits similar to Adobe Lightroom Photo Merge HDR, but faster and with higher quality output.
What if something moves between frames?
MergeRAW offers five blend modes to handle motion: Normal (blurs motion), Deghosting (freezes moving subjects), Median (deletes moving objects), Lighten (for multiple exposures on a dark background, star trails, and light painting), and Darken (for multiple exposures on light backgrounds).
Does MergeRAW work with Fujifilm X-Trans cameras?
Yes, since version 1.2.0. X-Trans sensors use a different color filter layout than the Bayer pattern most cameras share, so MergeRAW first converts X-Trans raws to demosaiced (linear) DNGs automatically, then merges those. This requires Adobe's free DNG Converter to be installed. All blend modes work; only Pixel Shift and Sky Tracking require true Bayer sensor data.
What does it cost?
MergeRAW is completely free!
What are the limitations?
MergeRAW expects reasonable shooting technique — a tripod for pixel shift and long stacks. Auto Align corrects the small shifts and rotations of real-world shooting with sub-pixel accuracy, but it's not a panorama stitching app. Windows support is newer and less battle-tested than macOS.
Contact & Feedback
MergeRAW is developed by Ryan Mack in spare time for fun and personal use.
Feedback, bug reports, and test images from different camera models are greatly appreciated!
Please email me at <My Name> @ gmail.com with MergeRAW in the subject line.