Every year, an increasing number of programs and applications for PC and other platforms are released in the world. Many users simply do not have time to follow the development of events in the world of developers and often do not know with the help of which programs it is necessary to open one or another file format about which they had not heard anything before. This article will discuss how to open CR2 - the format is not new, but it still raises questions from a number of users.
Many professional photographers and amateur photographers with experience know that CR2 is nothing more than a variation of the popular RAW graphic format. It has been used in many Canon SLR cameras for a long time, but even today, not all users know how to open CR2. And you can do this in different ways and with the help of several utilities for viewing and editing images. Let's take a closer look at each of the options.
The Canon Raw Image File (this is the full name of the format we are describing) is easiest to open with a free program called XnView. To do this, you need to download and install the version of the program suitable for your operating system on the PC, and then just start viewing the images of interest. A huge plus of this utility is that with its help you can not only view several hundred graphic formats, but also convert files from one format to another. Thus, the "ill-fated" CR2 can easily be converted into any of the usual formats for you.
But sometimes it happens that photos need not only to be viewed, but also edited. And all the tools available to the user are not able to help even make the simplest manipulations with a problem called the “CR2 format”. How to open and process images in this format in this case? The fastest solution is to use the Canon Digital Photo Professional app, which comes with almost every Canon camera. This software will allow not only to view the captured files, but also to make their full editing.
For those users who are used to processing photos using Photoshop, you can open CR2 with this program. The main thing is that its version is not lower than CS2. If this graphics package still refuses to open CR2, then it is additionally necessary to install a plugin called Adobe Camera Raw of the third or fourth version. However, to prevent any problems, it is advisable to use Photoshop CS4 or later, and install at least version 5.6 ACR for it. If you have these programs on your computer, you won’t have to puzzle over how to open CR2.
In addition to the methods described above, Windows users can open this format using other programs, for example, Google Picasa, ACDSee Photo Manager, IrfanView or Xara.
If the solution to this issue is for users whose PCs work with the Windows operating system everything is relatively simple, then how to work with CR2, who has another OS installed on the computer?
There are a number of high-quality software that will help eliminate this problem. On Apple OS X with CR2 format, the aforementioned Google Picasa, Photoshop and Canon's native software package will work without problems. Also, Snap Converter and Apple iPhoto can replenish this list, but they lose in simplicity to their main competitors. But for a number of Linux-based operating systems, users will not have much choice. If you still do not know how to open CR2 on this OS, then you have only one optimal option - Google Picasa. To date, this universal utility on this platform is still unrivaled.
And finally, do not forget that the evolution of graphic editors and image viewers does not stand still - perhaps tomorrow you will be able to open photos from a Canon camera in the program that did not cope with this task yesterday.