Raw support in various Photoshop vintages

I have Adobe Photoshop 9.0.2 ("CS2"). I don't use it very often, and engage it mostly in order to follow technical discussions here (and also to be able to numerically read the results of white balance color correction done by such techniques as "eyedroppering").

Just for reference, I do most of my photo editing in Picture Publisher 10, and use DPP for raw development.

The version of Adobe Camera Raw I have (V 3.7) does not support the latest Canon CR2 files.

It looks to me as if the latest version of ACR is not compatible with Photoshop CS2 - maybe only CS3 and up, or maybe only CS4.

I am not really anxious to upgrade to CS4 at the moment, but perhaps I will have to. (For one thing, I hear various horror stories about it, which may be overblown.)

I'd like to hear the thoughts of the experts out there on my options here.

Thank you so much.

Doug_Kerr said:

It looks to me as if the latest version of ACR is not compatible with Photoshop CS2 - maybe only CS3 and up, or maybe only CS4.

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Yep Doug, that's quite right; I'm - at the moment - on PS-CS-2 too, but use C1 or RAW Developer and sometimes LR.

There's a workarround, if you wish to use ACR with newer CR.2's:

download the latest DNG-converter from Adobe, convert these recent Canon-raws in a DNG, this should work with older ACR's.

Hi, Michael,

Michael Fontana said:

Yep Doug, that's quite right; I'm - at the moment - on PS-CS-2 too, but use C1 or RAW Developer and sometimes LR.

There's a workarround, if you wish to use ACR with newer CR.2's:

download the latest DNG-converter from Adobe, convert these recent Canon-raws in a DNG, this should work with older ACR's.

Click to expand...

Oh, that's a thought. I'll try that. (I need to get into some DNG-fiddling anyway!)

Thanks.

Best regards,

Doug

HI, Michael,

Michael Fontana said:

download the latest DNG-converter from Adobe, convert these recent Canon-raws in a DNG, this should work with older ACR's.

Click to expand...

Did that, and it seems to work quite nicely.

I need to convert some older CR2s and see how well all the properties are conserved.

Thanks for the hint.

Best regards,

Doug

BTW Doug

Michael did state about "Raw Developer" let me tell you, this is quite a rough but very good developper, I quite often use it (mostly with Sinar/Brumbaer DNGs), it devellops images amazingly clear (sharp/unnoised/vibrant)…
It is not so easy, even if there are not a lot of options, but if you have time for some back and forth, it's worth the try!

Nicolas

It's been for some years my favourite, now I use it, together with the C1-4 LE in tandem. Personally, I don't find it difficult, rather a thoroughbread-converter.

They' re different beast, but both have their merits.

In its actual version, the highlight recovery is quite amazing.
Don't forget to set the curve to "Lightness", that means the L-channel of LAB!

Michael Fontana said:

Don't forget to set the curve to "Lightness", that means the L-channel of LAB!

Click to expand...

Thanks! yes, that is my default settings…