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Fuji RAF files too big? How to shrink them

Published 17 October 2026 · By Ferdi

A Fuji X-T5 RAF is about 30 MB. Shoot one event and the card fills fast, and the drive fills faster. Here is why the files are that size, what your camera's settings already do, and what shrinking them costs you.

Why RAF files are so big

A RAF holds the raw data straight off the sensor. The X-T5 sensor is 40 megapixels, or 7728 × 5152 pixels, and each photosite records 14 bits. Forty million photosites at 14 bits each comes to about 70 MB before any compression, worked out from the sensor spec.

Our X-T5 test files came in at about 30 MB, well under that figure.

What the camera's RAW settings do

The X-T5 menu has three RAW choices. These are Fuji's names.

• Uncompressed RAW gives the biggest files. All the sensor data is kept as recorded.
• Lossless Compressed RAW gives smaller files. Fuji calls this one lossless, which is the camera maker's own claim.
• Compressed RAW gives the smallest files. Fuji's own FAQ calls it lossy, so it throws some data away.

Stacking lossy on lossy returns less. The Nikon Z8 sample we tested was already compressed in camera. It saved 62%, the least of the five cameras.

What a lossy DNG does to a Fuji file

Shrinking a RAF means writing a lossy DNG. Squeeze re-encodes the image data with JPEG XL, which is what makes the file smaller. Here are our numbers, using the Balanced setting.

The first two rows have no denoise. The last row adds DxO's denoise (DeepPRIME 3) before shrinking. Five of its nine files are in-camera HDR shots, and they shrink more, so that 94% runs high.

Your numbers will move with the scene and the ISO. Test a few of your own files before you shrink a whole card.

HDR files are a special case

In-camera HDR stacks three frames into one RAF. In our denoised test set, those files were about 77 MB each and came out at 3.4 to 4.2 MB. The output is about the size of one frame, so the other two frames look to be left out. If you shoot HDR, keep the originals for those shots.

Trade-offs to know before you shrink

• It is one-way. Once the RAF is deleted, the lossy DNG is the only copy.
• The demosaic step is frozen in. The colour is worked out with today's software. Better colour processing later will not reach the shrunk file.
• Some camera data is dropped. Fuji focus points and face-detect boxes may not carry over. Film simulations are expected to carry over, but we have not fully checked them.
• Fuji's own software is untested. We assume Fuji X RAW Studio will not open a shrunk file.
• DxO is untested on it. We assume DxO PureRAW and PhotoLab will refuse a lossy DNG, so denoise the RAF first.
• It takes time. Shrinking nine photos took about 70 seconds in our tests. The denoise run in the last row took 1 minute 49 seconds.

A simple plan for Fuji shooters

1. Pick the frames you will keep. Only the keepers need shrinking.
2. Edit in Lightroom first. Your edits follow the lossy file only after Lightroom has written them to XMP. Turn on automatic XMP writing in Catalog Settings, or select the photos and press ⌘S.
3. Denoise the RAF in DxO first, if you use it.
4. Shrink the finished keepers. Keep the RAFs until you have checked the results.

Squeeze does the shrinking step in one drop. It shows the sizes before you start and leaves your originals alone until you decide. It needs an Apple silicon Mac on macOS 15 or later, plus Adobe's free DNG Converter. Get it at squeeze.photos/#install.