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 — while JPEG XL compression keeps it compact.
Camera makers leave a gap here: bodies like the Nikon Z series and Canon R5 Mark II offer in-camera multiple exposures but save the combined result only as a JPEG. MergeRAW closes that gap — shoot the frames as ordinary raws, then blend them with Normal (average), Lighten, or Darken to get the multi-exposure raw file you wish your camera would make for you.
Select your frames, pick an alignment and blend mode, and the merged DNG 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
Full support for 4, 8, 16, and 32-shot pixel shift, including the half-pixel high-resolution modes. Better quality than NX Studio with faster processing, plus deghosting to rescue 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.
Remove (or Embrace) Motion
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. You decide what motion becomes.
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.
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.
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 MoreDownload
What's New in 1.2.0 / 1.2.1
- Fujifilm X-Trans support — X-Trans raw files now merge via an automatic demosaiced (linear) DNG conversion: averaging, HDR brackets, Deghost, Auto Align, night mode, median, and dark frames all work (requires Adobe's free DNG Converter)
- Linear DNG input — already-demosaiced DNGs from any source merge through every core path
- Tripod stacks stay true raw — when Auto Align finds nothing actually moved, the output is a genuine losslessly compressed raw mosaic instead of a linear DNG, about a third the size
- Merges that fail now report the reason instead of failing silently
- HDR bracket highlights fixed (1.2.1) — merged brackets keep the highlight detail recovered from darker exposures instead of clipping it to white
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.