CANON RAW AND MACBBO AIR COMPUTER

[billydodson]

<p>A good friend just purchased a Mac notebook and took it to S Africa with her. She posted the below note on facebook ... this was the first time she'd loaded images from her camera to the computer. It appears she can't open her raw files and view them. Opportunities to help her will be intermittent because she's in the field for the next few weeks. I'm a Nikon guy and not able to offer as much assistance as I'd like. Any advice I might relay would be appreciated. Thx/Billy Dodson</p>

<p><strong>Photographers: I need your help! My Macbook Air doesn't recognize raw files. It will allow me to download my card, and I can see the images in the folder I place them in on my desktop. BUT - Can I safely format my card or are these just some sort of phantom images! Thanks for your input!</strong></p>

[homer_arment1]

<p>You might advise her to download Google's Picasso. It would allow her to open and work with her raw files. She could also use Photoshop.com (Adobe's on-line photo editor) to open the raw files. Or she could just set her camera to save raw+JPG so she could see the JPG version of the raw files she captured.</p>

[digitaldog]

<p>What software is she trying to access this data with? OS X does have the ability to decode raw files (not all that great) from the OS level. She might need to update the machine software to do this. Then something like Preview would allow her to view them but its not an ideal raw processor. <br>

IF she has an Adobe product (Lightroom, Camera Raw in Photoshop) and can’t access them, have her convert them to DNG with the free DNG converter from Adobe. <br>

And yes, while she may not have the proper software to view and render the raw data, she could save them to the hard drive and format the cards to keep shooting. I’d be scared to do this with just one back up (I always travel with a 2nd driver). </p>

[howard_m]

<p>Every 'raw' cr2 format is different so it's vital to know what camera she has (and then you can look on Apple's site to see if they support that format).</p>

<p>http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3825</p>

<p>Bottom line: The files are intact (she's seeing the jpg 'preview' images that are embedded) and she needs to update her Mac's s/w a little to get that raw support. If the Finder is showing the .cr2 of approx the correct size (in bytes), then she should be good-to-go</p>

[billydodson]

<p>Appreciate the help with this. I'm going to start relaying your information.</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>To <strong>reiterate and restate</strong> what is implicit in some of the above-- older versions of, say, Photoshop ACR, will not read some newer camera (Canon) RAW files. Use the Canon software supplied with the camera to load and convert to DNG for those programs.</p>

[allan_jamieson2]

<p>The other possibility is that she might be using also a new camera model with the new laptop. With Apple software you get "Software Update" messages giving you the option to download patches for the standard iPhoto software to allow it to open files from camera models made after the software that the computer was sold with. I usually don't bother with those updates, as long as it recognises the cameras that I own and use, I don't need it to recognise files from every new model of camera that comes along. If she can access the internet with it, ask her to click on the apple symbol on the top lefthandside of the screen, then click on the 2nd option under that for Software Update and see if there are any updates for iPhoto which might allow her laptop to recognise her raw files. </p>