I received my new 40D camera body this morning (two days from order to my front door by Wolf Camera online; no tax or shipping charge!). I dropped in a CF card and a battery (the one in the box was already charged), set the format to RAW only, and took a few photos to make sure things were working.
But when I decided to look at the photos in my computer, I ran into a problem. I use a Mac Powerbook running OS X 10.4.9, and I tried to open the files in Photoshop CS3 Extended. This error message appeared: "Could not complete your request because Photoshop does not recognize this type of file." I noticed then that the new images carried a .CR2 suffix, unlike the .CRW files from my 10D cameras.
Aha, I thought; perhaps Lightroom 1.01 is more up to date. Well, no. When I tried to open the photos in LR, I got this error message: "The files appear to be unsupported or damaged. (1)"
I called Canon customer support, where the rep told me to go to the Adobe website and find a plug-in that would fix the problem. I went to the Download page at Adobe and found information on a plug-in called Adobe DNG Converter and Camera Raw 4.1 Update. I downloaded that software and carefully followed the steps needed to install it in the Adobe file in my computer's library. Then I restarted Photoshop and tried again. It still didn't work.
So I called Adobe customer service, and after several excrutiating minutes listening to "smooth jazz," I talked to a rep who said that the 40D is not recognized by the 4.1 plug-in. The latest Canon camera on the Adobe list is the ID Mark III. He said he expected that an updated plug-in, accommodating newer cameras like the 40D, would appear "within a couple of months."
This is not the fun time I expected to be having by now!
I seem to have several options: (1) Install the EOS Digital Solution Disk that came with the camera and use the Digital Photo Professional software (which reviewers typically describe as clunky) to convert from RAW, (2) shoot everything in Fine JPEG until Adobe gets on the stick, (3) buy another manufacturer's RAW converter, which really seems like an expensive bad idea, or (4) just keep using my old 10D cameras (my computer loves their .CRW files). That doesn't sound good, either.
Any suggestions? I'd appreciate your thoughts. Thanks!
You can try to shoot RAW+JPEG so that you can use the JPEG now with CS3 and when Adobe updates their Camera Raw plug-in to support 40D, you can use it with the RAW files later. Or, install DPP and use it to convert the RAW files to TIFF and use them in CS3.
It can take a month or two for software support to catch up with new camera releases. You can watch the Post Processing forum here or the news page over at dpreview.com or the Adobe web site for the announcement.
Bibble is now supporting the 40D in addition to Canon's DPP.
Jim, I hate to be the one that breaks it to you (because the messenger is usually shot on this subject) but this is precisely what happens when a new camera comes out - some folks forgot to check to see if their new toys are supported by their favorite software, and find that it takes a while after release for the coders to catch up.
Every time this happens.
There's no indication that it will ever change.
As of this morning, the only RAW processors that I know of that support this week or so old camera are Silkypix and Bibble. Adobe has an update schedule for ACR that is about once a quarter, and they sometimes (but not often) accelerate that. Otherwise, it's DPP or shoot JPEG (or RAW+JPEG, so you can re-process later) until the next update.
Coincidentally, Adobe's programs all use the same RAW conversion engine. Lightroom and Bridge/Photoshop support exactly the same cameras.
I don't have a 40d - but if DPP works - then go that route - DPP is way under rated in my opinion - I just recently switched over to LR - but until then DPP was my choice and yes, I do have ACR, C1, and others.
Good luck - Tom
Jim, you're lucky you already have CS3. If you had CS2 then adobe would insist that you upgrade to cs3 just to use their new ACR component that should work in CS2.
DPP is not perfect but nor is it bad. Far from it. It'll certainly do a very good job of converting from raw to tiff or jpeg which you can then further edit in CS3 if required.
Thank you all for your comments! I'll load DPP and give it a try. It's true I didn't anticipate that there would be a lag between new hardware (the camera) and software that can process its images, so that's my mistake. I suppose I just assumed that there was a secret network behind the scenes where all the camera makers dance with the Adobe codebuilders around a huge bubbling cauldron somewhere. Guess that's not so!
Many thanks for all the suggestions. I loaded the EOS digital solutions disk and tried moving a few RAW test pictures through Digital Photo Professional, and I agree that it will work fine, at least until Adobe updates its plugins to reflect a number of new cameras including the 40D.
I got my 40D this evening and had no problem getting images into Lightroom 1.1. I could have sent them the CS3 if I had wanted to. I opened them up in DPP, batch processed them, then under image transfer settings just found the LR exe file. I could have used CS3 if I wanted to. I transfered them as 16 bit TIFFs. Found the converted images when I looked in "Import from Disk" they were right there waiting for me.
