View RAW Digital Images in Windows XP's Explorer

First we had Microsoft's quiet release of its beta codenamed Acrylic, a rumored competitor to Adobe's Photoshop.

Microsoft's next salvo in upping its digital imaging support is its release of the RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer, a free ?PowerToy? for use with Windows XP. Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that it would offer RAW image format support--uncompressed images produced by digital cameras from vendors like Canon and Nikon--in its future Longhorn operating system, as well as in an update to Windows XP.

The update arrived yesterday, in the form of a 47.7MB utility available for download from Microsoft's site. The utility lets you view images and EXIF data, and print photos captured in RAW image formats from supported Canon and Nikon digital cameras.



Unfortunately, this utility won't let you directly edit or adjust images in any way. If you choose to "edit" images, you'll need to have imaging software installed that can handle that RAW format; all Microsoft's "edit" function does is launch the appropriate editing application. Nor will it let you convert images to another format, such as JPEG or bitmap.

Still, this is a positive development for digital SLR and advanced camera users like myself, who shoot in RAW format. Now, when we scroll through our hard drive full of images, Windows' Explorer will no longer be unable to display the RAW images sitting there.

Personally, I tend to shoot with my Nikon D70 in RAW + Basic JPEG mode (although, I wish Nikon offered RAW + Fine JPEG instead--after all, with 2GB CompactFlash cards as cheap as they are now, I'm not concerned about storing it all). Do you shoot in RAW format, and if so, why--and what kinds of tools are you looking for?