Very useful RAW codec Pack for Windows

Hi All -

Have just stumbled on this:

www.fastpictureviewer.com/codecs/

Basically it's a free codec pack that will allow Windows XP, Vista and 7 to read RAW files natively; i.e. you will be able to see the thumbnails of your RAW files in Explorer or My Computer etc.

Works like a charm on my PC, thought you all may find it useful!

As a matter of interest how much does the presence of these CODECS slow down the display of file listings in explorer? Does it have any effect outside of thumbnail display?

Mike

Yes it is a great codec & viewer package, I purchased the Pro version of the viewer following this thread a while back.

Great for reviewing your RAW files quickly and deciding which are keepers and which to delete. I too thoroughly recommend it

Edit: Like Stefan I'm also running Windows 7 64bit but on an Intel quadcore Duo with 4Gb of RAM.

This was already posted earlier I believe.
I'm only using DNG for raw and it does not slow down my PC, it opens the preview image just as fast as with JPG files.
I also at least can still navigate without problems while he is loading the previews.
Of course Results may varies per PC.
I'm using windows 7 64bit on an AMD atlhon 2x 2.75ghz and 2gb of ram so not spectacular.

I suppose I should research this a bit as my PC seems to be a little slow sometimes when listing files and I can't understand why. It might be something as stupid as having a floppy disc drive which it tests to see if there is a disc in.

Still XP and Core 2 something or other 4 gig RAM - frankly I no longer care much as they are all so fast. I can remember marvelling at the first PC I saw with a hard disc in it - a huge 5 megabytes of disc space and 128k of RAM (and you could only use 64k of that and it still ran WordStar as fast as modern PCs run Word).

Mike

Great! Just hunted for this thread,Glad i found it Phew.Very handy as i can now view my dng files direct in windows explorer,

windows 7 pro 64bit, 8gb ram, q6600 cpu

Mike

Should be able to turn off the feature in BIOS that tells the PC there is a floppy drive in the system or not. That way, it will never waste time searching for it, at boot-up or any other point.

ife

Mike,
Also worth making sure that your motherboard drivers are up to date, it can have a big effect on the speed of file transfers etc.

That's a nice addition, it works seamlessly with Windows, at the moment!

And still is here so don't worry

Am I missing something here? I've always been able to view Pentax PEFs in both XP and Vista with just the bog standard Pentax codec installed.

quick question about PEF files

i reset my camera settings and and forgot to set the RAWs to record as DNGs, so now I have a load of PEFs, which photoshop won't open

can I change them to DNGs at all? I've just installed silkypix but photoshop won't open the PEFs still...

any way I can get at them in photoshop??

Photoshop will open them, if you have the Pentax codec installed. However you can't install it on early versions of PS. Adobe want you to buy the latest version.

Alternatively you could convert them to tiffs or jpegs in the Pentax supplied software.

If you have trouble finding the Pentax codec PM me with your email address and I'll send it to you.

I'm not sure that is the case with a 64bit operating system Ken (at least in my experience).

As Ken stated, the later versions of PS should open them, however if you are having difficulty Adobe provide a free DNG convertor program at: link