Filed under: Photo, Windows, Freeware
How to add Mac-like RAW image support to Windows 7, Vista, XP
by Sebastian Anthony Oct 21st 2009 at 6:00PM
But how will this help me...? Well, if you're not a photographer, this is utterly insignificant. If you are a photographer though -- and I'd hazard a guess that most or all of us here have a digital camera -- it means that you no longer need to rely on manufacturer's own-brand image browser, or Adobe's Lightroom or Photoshop. You could now, in theory, manage your photography portfolio through Windows -- you can already tag and star-rate images, but with this codec pack there's absolutely no reason to use other tools.
And best of all it's free and devoid of any malware. It installs into the background and you'll never hear from it again. It's yet another good reason to install Windows 7...
P.S. Taken a little wind out of your sails, eh, Apple-centric photographers?
I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jordan said 6:21PM on 10-21-2009
One word: Awesome
Seven words: One less reason to use a Mac
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recrudesce said 6:45PM on 10-21-2009
why not just install the RAW codecs provided by the camera manufacturer ?
i can already do this using the RAW codec provided on the CD that came with my Canon 450D...
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Sebastian Anthony said 6:49PM on 10-21-2009
Good point!
There was a problem with the Canon RAW codec under 64bit Windows 7. It might have been fixed by now -- not sure.
Also, you might have to deal with another photographer's RAW files at some stage, and finding the camera's software online might be tricky -- or time-consuming.
Christian said 6:59PM on 10-21-2009
The P.S. made me laugh hard! A bit of a low blow but still made me laugh hard.
Thanks for the info btw, but yes, it's nice that it can handle multiple formats of raw files, especially that every manufacturer has their own kind. I do wonder if this has Leica too. Gonna check their site now.
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Sebastian Anthony said 7:02PM on 10-21-2009
Ah, perhaps you too have some idea of how tiresome it gets when Apple Photoshop users bang on about how their 'G4 processor is clearly superior to your Intel'...
... and then Apple changed to Intel and...
*giggles*
(You have a Leica digital...? Envy...)
John Freeman said 8:56PM on 10-21-2009
Awesome. Thanks, as canon still havent made raw codec that would work under 64 bit windows. Though that usually didnt matter much as all photos went through Camera Raw anyways.
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hazard said 5:32AM on 10-22-2009
Excellent. This is going straight to the flash drive toolkit :)
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Gilles Gardner said 7:59AM on 10-22-2009
See Microsoft RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer for Windows XP from 2005!!!
I agree with recrudesce as well. Not very likely that you would need one covering several brands of cameras.
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williamjaywhalen81 said 8:42AM on 10-22-2009
I see a bigger problem for us higher end DSLR users. If you shoot 300 RAW images...it's great to be able to view them quickly with Explorer, however the whole reason you should shoot in RAW is that you can modify the photo elements such as f-stop, aperture and other settings with RAW. Canon's software also supports batch processing so that you can apply types of settings such as outputting a chunk of images to black and white with particular types of configurations for a batch of photos. Windows still doens't do a good job handling RAW, which is why Apple (although I don't have any Apple besides iPods) handles RAW better as a integrated part of the OS.
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