UKC

Please help! I am a numpty with a new camera that I have no idea how to use. I have managed to take a whole load of photos in CR2 format which I cant open on my laptop. How can I convert these to a more useful form such as JPEG without any fancy software? Thanks in advance

In reply to Nicola: that's the Canon version of RAW, there should be some software that came with the camera, probably called digital photo professional, use that. You should also be able to set the camera to take in JPEG in future if you want.

In reply to Swirly:

Excellent! Thank you. Will try that now.

In reply to Nicola:

Google Picasa will do it

https://support.google.com/picasa/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=15625

(as long as new Camera is supported)

In reply to Nicola:

Yep, Digital Photo Professional is the one you need. If you've got lots of photos to convert there's a batch process tool in there to speed things along.

CR2 is Canon's RAW format. You can re-process RAW images in Digital Photo Professional to adjust exposure, contrast, sharpening, colours etc. It's the format of choice for me. Have a play around and see how it works.

You can change the camera's format to JPEG in the main menu. It's one of the first options.

If you use one of the 'Auto' modes, I think the camera always uses JPEG.

In reply to Nicola:

You can download a full working version of Lightroom free for a month. This will open any raw files