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June 16, 2005
[ WINDOWS RAW THUMBNAILS ]
MICROSOFT has just released a RAW IMAGE THUMBNAILER AND VIEWER for Windows XP.
As any serious digi-photographer knows Windows XP will not display thumbnails of RAW images when folders are opened in Windows Explorer. This is an annoying shortcoming in the OS because it means that there is no instant view of a folder of images from which to select files for opening in image editing software. JPEG, TIF and Bitmap are not a problem, but RAW is.
There is a very large setup file on the Microsoft site to install a Thumbnailer -- but don't get too excited. It only works with Nikon and Canon RAW files, and as thumbnail Registry hacks have already been invented for these file types MS is not giving its customers much. Pentax, Olympus, Sony and other camera owners are ignored, as is Adobe's generic DNG format.
For lucky Nikon and Canon users the MS thumbnailer does have one neat trick up its sleeve -- hover the cursor over the image thumbnail and up pops abbreviated EXIF data.
One feeble cheer for Microsoft.
dpmagic offers a RAW file Windows XP integration package for U$10 that claims to know all about 150 camera/file types, including Adobe's DNG. We tried the free "community" version – which doesn't offer much more than the Microsoft package – and it works well. We have also installed the trial "pro" version and it not only makes thumbnails of our Sony, Pentax and Olympus RAW files it also has an option for changing the thumbnail size. For Sony, Pentax, Olympus, Minolta etc owners dpmagic could be worth the money.
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Posted by terry at June 16, 2005 12:07 PM
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