8 Ways to Sunday

Microsoft has launched a new section of its web site targeted specifically at professional and advanced amateur photographers, and has released a free download for Windows XP that adds RAW image thumnailing and viewing to the company’s flagship operating system. After years of playing second fiddle to Apple in the digital imaging arena, it looks like Redmond is gearing up to give Cupertino a run for its money in that market.

The pro photography home page is about what you’d expect. It contains several informative articles that will be especially useful for advanced photographers that are just making the move from film to digital, or for Macintosh- and Linux-using digital photographers that are trying to get their heads around how things work in Windows. There are several articles on color management, including monitor and scanner profiling and a color space tutorial. Other pieces cover shooting landscapes digitally, choosing the best hardware and software, rescuing photos from damaged memory cards, digital workflow, digital print permanence, and even Photoshop actions.

The RAW tool is an interesting exercise in both compromise and restraint for Microsoft. Here’s how they describe it in the white paper that’s offered alongside the download:  

Note: I’ve linked to definitions of some key terms that non-Windows folks might not know.

The RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer is a free “PowerToy” for Microsoft Windows XP that provides the ability to view, organize, and print photos captured in supported camera RAW formats. The utility consists of two key components:

1. A Windows XP “shell extension” that provides thumbnail rendering, printing, and metadata display for RAW images.
2. A RAW image viewer application that provides previews, printing and slideshows of RAW and native image types. This application looks and works much like the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer with enhancements tailored to the needs of digital photographers.

These components work together to enhance the Windows XP “My Pictures” experience.

Note that the Microsoft RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer does not replace RAW processing software from the camera manufacturer or other provider and does not have all the features of a RAW converter. Rather, it is intended to improve users’ ability to view and organize RAW images in Windows when using these other software tools.

That’s my emphasis applied to the final paragraph, not Microsoft’s. Choosing to offer a useful level of minimum RAW format functionality in their operating system, rather than trying to do everything a customer could want, is a smart choice on their part. It’s the kind of path I’ve seen them taking more often lately, and one that’s probably necessary to get RAW image browsing working in Windows at all. Since every camera manufacturer’s RAW format is a little different — and particularly since every manufacturer makes its own RAW browsing and converting software — I’m sure Microsoft has to tread lightly to get the cooperation it needs from the likes of Nikon, Canon, and others.

According to the press release announcing the RAW add-on Microsoft is working together with Adobe, Canon, Fujifilm, and Nikon on the project. It’s a taste of things to come in Longhorn, the long-delayed next version of Windows, which will have more extensive RAW support baked right in. The Windows XP RAW image PowerToy that was released last month only supports Canon CRW files and Nikon NEF files, though more extensive support may be in the works.

Even a minimal level of RAW functionality in Windows is better than nothing, which is what we’ve had until now. My own digital camera doesn’t take RAW photos, but I have worked with them in the past. It’s ridiculous to have to start up a massive image editing suite like Photoshop just to find out that PICT000576.CRW is a shot of some bird, while PICT000589.CRW is the group photo you were looking for.

The new PowerToy is a version 1.0 product and may not work entirely as advertised, but I’m willing to give it a shot. I’ll try to update here or in a separate review once I’ve worked with it a while.

(Props: Tim Grey’s July 1st Digital Darkroom Questions newsletter. Grey is a professional digital photographer, educator, and author. He went to work for Microsoft last year to help them beef up Windows as a platform for digital photography.)

Updates

• 7/5/2005 @ 4:55 pm — Paul Thurrott details the expanded RAW support in Longhorn.
• 7/5/2005 @ 4:55 pm — The Windows XP Photos newsgroup has some bug reports for the RAW image viewer PowerToy. (Those are all links to the web interface; no NNTP news reader is necessary.)