Canon RAW CR2 and CRW Thumbnail support in Vista
May 13 Carl Nelson
Subscribe to our FULL RSS feed!
Users of Canon’s late-model digital SLR cameras were disappointed when, upon upgrading to Windows Vista, their RAW image thumbnails disappeared. Microsoft had an update for Windows XP that supported some RAW image formats, but said that any support in Vista would have to come from the camera manufacturer.
Thankfully, Canon has stepped up and released software that supports RAW image thumbnails and previewing in Windows Vista. Here is a direct link to the update (10 MB), but if it’s a dynamic link, it may not work for you.
If that link doesn’t work, here’s what you do (Canon’s site is all Javascript based, so I can’t simply link to the page with the file):
- Go to Canon’s main support page
- Find your camera; note that only CR2 files are supported, not CRW. So if you have an original Digital Rebel/300D, there is no update for you yet The latest version supports CRW files now!
- On the next page, click the “Drivers & Downloads” tab
- There will be a link called “Drivers & Software” - click it
- In the “Select OS” drop-down box, select Vista
- Under “Software” find the “Canon RAW Codec for Windows Vista”
- I think you can figure out the rest ;)
Enjoy having thumbnails of your RAW images with this update! Dynamic thumbnail size even works, and it seems to be a lot less resource-intensive than Microsoft’s .NET based software used in Windows XP.
Update Both versions 1.3 and 1.2 are listed, and 1.2 has a newer date, which is confusing. The reason for this is that they put 1.2 back on after discovering compatibility problems with 1.3 (specially with Microsoft Pro Photo Tools). So unless you are using that program, you should probably use the latest version. Otherwise, stick with version 1.2.
And by the way, other manufacturers have also offered codecs for their own RAW image formats, including Nikon, Pentax, and Olympus.
Filed under: PC Software
Tags: Digital Imaging, Drivers, Vista
Thanks for sharing. Can’t wait to try it out at Vista. :)
It’s only for the 32-bit version, still waiting on 64-bit :(
That’s why I went with 32 bit when I switched to Vista ;)
If i wanted to stay 32-bit i’d have stuck with XP. Vista has too many silly little bugs to loose the supposed 64-bit speed increase over!
Still no RAW Codec for Vista x64.
We are working on a 64 bit codec for CR2 on Vista.
http://www.ardfry.com/cr2-codec/
don’t spam! Nobody wants to pay for something that should be in the software package provided by Canon! If you want to advertise go somewhere else…
Thank you for sharing this.
[...] Windows Vista doesn’t support Canon’s RAW codec - CR2. Thankfully, Canon does offer a CR2 codec for Vista. Unfortunately, it only supports the 32-bit flavour of the [...]
This is the answer regarding Vista-64 Canon RAW codes:
”
Dear Customer,
Thank you for your recent enquiry regarding your Canon product.
There will not be a RAW Codec for Vista 64 bit.
Yours sincerely,
Canon Support Centre
“
LOL, Seriously? Thats what they said?
They must be pretty lazy or something, I was planning on switching back to Nikon anyway.
From what I hear, Nikon says the same thing.
http://digitalmediaphile.wordpress.com/2007/03/08/nikon-raw-codec-updated-again-still-no-vista-x64-support/
All I want to do is use all my RAM and this is how the camera manufacturers treat us?