Problems with rendering DCR thumbnails from a Kodak DCS pro slr n

I am having problems in my Photoshop CS browser in rendering the thumbnails from Kodak DCS pro slr n camera (on which Kodak stopped production and tech support a few years ago). The files are in Kodak's own DCR format. I can still edit those files in kodak's own PHotoDesk software once I transfer them to my Windows XP Pro desktop, and can still see the DCR files in PHotoDesk, but once I export them as Tiffs to Photoshop CS, I am not able to see the DCR files as thumbnails anymore.... In the past this was possible, not sure if there is interference from another program, I tried uninstalling and reinstalling both Photoshop and PhotoDesk.

Any answers/suggestions would be most wellcome.

Rene-F. Granaada

You say

once I export them as Tiffs to Photoshop CS, I am not able to see the DCR files as thumbnails anymore

Click to expand...

Do you mean that Windows Explorer cannot show you a thumbnail for .tif files? Or that it cannot show you thumbnails for .dcr files?

On my PC, with Windows XP Service Pack 3, if I ask Windows Explorer to show thumbnails (View->Thumbnails), it can do so for .tif files saved from Photoshop (CS3, but should make no difference) with the following 'image compression' options:

(a) 'no compression'
(b) LZW compressed

but _not_ if the .tif file is compressed with the 'zip compression' option.

So if you're having problems seeing thumbnails for .tif files then perhaps they're zip-compressed, or XP SP3 has capabilities that earlier service packs didn't have in this respect, and you're on an earlier service pack. Or maybe my version of Photoshop has installed its own codecs on Windows for 'thumbnailing' various file formats.

I suppose another answer is just to create thumbnail jpegs for each file, and Windows Explorer will be able to show these as thumbnails.

If this doesn't help, could you perhaps explain exactly which files you want to see the thumbnails of, and in which context.

HTH

Alan

From the info on the Adobe web site, the Adobe DNG converter should be able to convert these to .dng format. In the long term you should consider converting your .dcr files, because as time goes on less and less programs will support them. At least DNG format should be usable for many years.

Browsing around with Google, Image Converter Plus claims to be able to read .dcr format as well, although I don't know what target format you would want to save them in if you chose that route.

Regards

Alan

Alan, i will try what you suggest..what I meant however that my older dcr thumbnails for some weird reason do not show up as a real thumbnail with a small pic in the photoshop browser, but just as a kind of placeholder without a pic..on more recent photo's, after I reinstalled Kodak Photodesk, now the DCR files do show up in the photoshop browser window. Then I can make them into tiffs once i start working on them in P.Shop. how to get the old DCR thumnails back, I have no idea, as I do not have them those photos on the card anymore that they were originally taken on..