Well, not natively, but with the free FastPictureViewer codec pack you can now view your camera's high-resolution files within Windows 7's Explorer. All in all this codec pack has almost every camera type covered, from Canon's CR2 to Sony's SRF and Nikon's NRW -- and many others. 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?
Tags: digital-photo, photography, photoshop, raw
Some info found at the website:
FastPictureViewer WIC Codec Pack 1.30
A free collection of 32 and 64-bit image decoders for Windows 7, Vista and XP.
Windows Vista introduced a modern and extensible imaging framework called Windows Imaging Component (WIC). The operating system comes with built-in support for several common image formats including jpeg, bmp, png, gif, tiff and HD Photo. WIC makes it possible for 3rd parties to add first-class support for image formats to Windows, complete with thumbnails in Explorer, preview and slideshow support in Photo Gallery / Photo Viewer and metadata search integration.
The FastPictureViewer WIC Codec Pack provides such platform support for additional formats through read-only image decoders, simultaneously available in both 32 and 64-bit flavor.
WIC-enabled image viewers such as Windows Live™ Photo Gallery, Windows 7's Media Center and our own FastPictureViewer Professional "automagically" gain the ability to open and view new image formats, play slideshows etc, so does all .NET 3.x and WPF-based applications.
Download the FastPictureViewer WIC Codec Pack 1.30 (Standalone)
http://www.fastpictureviewer.com/bin/FastPictureViewerWICCodecPack.msi
Version 1.30 (Oct 20, 2009) adds support for Sigma X3F raw files.
Version 1.23 (Oct 09, 2009) fixes an issue with Adobe DNG's forced previews.
Version 1.22 (Oct 08, 2009) adds configuration options to force preview-only on Canon raw and Adobe DNG files.
Version 1.21 (Sep 29, 2009) adds support for more camera models, including the new Canon EOS 7D.
Version 1.20 (Sep 14, 2009) adds a small codec configuration tool (allows to tune some aspects of the codecs operations).
Comes in a 2.66MB, digitally signed, malware-free installer (with uninstall). MD5: c817f3205db7f2be04121dd0a6816771
Image file formats currently supported by the FastPictureViewer WIC Codec Pack
The FastPictureViewer WIC Codec Pack 1.10 was released on September 12, 2009 and supports the TGA raster image format along with the 20 raw image formats from more than 13 camera manufacturers, covering about 300 camera models. All formats and features are supported on both 32 and 64-bit editions of Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Vista with Platform Update and, finally, Windows XP SP3. The package also ships with a Windows XP thumbnail provider, enabling thumbnail view support in XP SP3 Explorer for all image formats handled by the codecs included in pack and any other existing WIC-enabled codecs that might be already installed.
Raster Image Formats
Extension(s) Name Autorotate Metadata Remarks
*.tga, *.tpic Truevision Targa (TGA) n/a n/a Supports most format flavors: uncompressed and RLE-encoded grayscale 8 and 16-bit, true color 15, 16, 24 and 32-bit (with alpha) and 8-bit indexed with 15, 16, 24 and 32-bit colormap.
Raw Image Formats
Extension(s) Name Autorotate Metadata Remarks
*.dng Adobe Digital Negative Y Y Can be configured to skip raw conversion and always use embedded previews instead. Note that preview images can be of lower resolution than the real image.
*.cr2, *.crw Canon Raw Image Y Y Can be configured to skip raw conversion and always use embedded previews instead. Note that Canon previews are usually of lower resolution than the real image.
*.raf Fuji Raw Image Y Y
*.3pr, *.fff Hasselblad Raw Image Y Y
*.dcr, *.kdc Kodak Raw Image Y Y
*.raw, *.rwl Leica Raw Image Y Y
*.mrw Minolta Raw Image Y Y
*.nef, *.nrw Nikon Raw Image Y Y Can be configured to skip raw conversion and always use embedded previews instead (preserves NX edits)
*.orf Olympus Raw Image Y Y
*.rw2 Panasonic Raw Image Y Y
*.pef Pentax Raw Image Y Y
*.x3f Sigma Raw Image Y Y JPEG Preview only
*.arw, *.sr2, *.srf Sony Raw Image Y Y
Additional Features
Extension(s) Name Remarks
All formats WIC Thumbnail provider for XP Provides support for thumbnail views in Windows XP Explorer (SP3), for all the above formats and all existing WIC-enabled codecs.
All formats WIC Import Plug-In for Photoshop Enables Adobe Photoshop CS3/4 to directly import images from any installed WIC codec, bypassing ACR entirely. The plug-in is available as a separate download in 32-bit only at this time (so this plug-in won't work on Photoshop CS4 64-bit edition for the time being).
All formats Win7/Vista SlideShow Gadget Windows Sidebar SlideShow gadget, modified to support raw formats. The gadget is available as a separate download. Unzip to "C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\Shared Gadgets\".
Is it really free?
Yes, the FastPictureViewer WIC Codec Pack is free for personal use. We release it as a separate, standalone donationware package, independant from our commercial FastPictureViewer Professional image viewer, which was hindered by the lack of proper 32-bit (and, more importantly, 64-bit bit) raw codecs for many major formats.
We decided to also release the codecs separately from the photo viewer, hoping that it would be useful on its own. If you find the codec pack useful too, but are not interested in buying FastPictureViewer, you might want to consider a small donation to show your appreciation. Thank you
