Enabling (Free!) DNG Support in FastPictureViewer and Windows Live Photo Gallery on Windows XP
Do you want FastPictureViewer and Windows Live Photo Gallery to support DNG files on Windows XP? Keep reading to find out how.
If you are a digital photographer that “shoots RAW”, chances are you have at least considered converting your camera’s native files to Adobe Digital NeGatives (DNG). The DNG format promises greater software support for RAW photos by saving developers from the maintenance nightmare of supporting all the manufacturer (and camera) specific RAW formats on the market today.
Microsoft took a platform approach to the same problem by developing their Windows Imaging Component (WIC). It provides a framework for working with images and metadata, with third parties releasing codecs to add support for individual RAW file formats. In practice this means manufacturers release codecs for their cameras to improve their support for Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system. The three most notable applications using this framework are Vista’s Windows Explorer, FastPictureViewer and Windows Live Photo Gallery.
I prefer Adobe’s approach to this problem but market realities dictate they fully support Microsoft’s operating systems to achieve mass market penetration. After some delay Adobe Labs produced a release candidate DNG codec to help address this gap. Unfortunately they only provided support for Vista 32 bit users, leaving Windows XP and Vista 64 bit users to purchase a codec from Ardfry or avoid using DNGs with WIC-based applications. Eight months later not only do these issues still remain, Adobe hasn’t given any indication whether they will ever be resolved.
Well us Windows XP users don’t need to wait for Adobe any longer.
Instructions
Adobe Labs’ DNG codec will install on Windows XP if you give it a helping hand:
Warning: By following these instructions you agree you are doing so at your own risk. Adobe Labs haven’t fully tested their DNG codec on Windows XP and are unlikely to provide support if you have problems. I haven’t encountered any problems over the month I’ve had the codec installed but can’t provide any guarantees. I only use the codec to view photos, not write metadata (ratings etc) to them, so definitely backup your photos before updating their metadata.
- Download a copy of the Adobe Labs’ DNG codec
- Download a copy of the Remove Installer OS Check script and extract a copy to the same directory used in step 1.
- Drag and drop the DNG codec installer file onto the removechk.vbs file. This will remove the check ensuring it only installs on Vista 32 bit.
- Run the codec installer. It should now complete successfully on Windows XP.
- If prompted, reboot your system.
You should now have a working DNG codec on your system. To confirm please run FastPictureViewer or Windows Live Photo Gallery and test whether they can display your DNG files.
On my system this worked flawlessly and FastPictureViewer could zoom and pan DNG files at full size without any pauses or delays. Hopefully your experience will be just as smooth.
Please share your experiences with us especially if you use this codec to write metadata back to your photos. And here’s hoping that Adobe soon releases an update that officially supports Windows XP, making these instructions redundant!
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In: Howto, Software · Tagged with: codec, DNG, Software
No hack required, 64-bit/32-bit, XP SP3 to Vista to Windows 7, much quicker and a lot more stable than the (still unfinished) beta Adobe DNG codec:
http://www.fastpictureviewer.com/codecs/
Supports 20 raw formats in total, including DNG of course!
@Axel, Looks promising! I’ve installed it, and if everything works OK after the reboot I’ll post something to recommend readers try it instead. I’d much rather point people to a supported, free DNG codec then educate them on how to hack something to work despite the vendor’s installer.
It would seem that fastpictureviewer.com will solve my problem, but even at $10US I resent having to pay for something that I think should be included. I will simply not use windows photo gallery or windows explorer in my Win 7 64bit for perusing and organising my photos and use Picasa instead. Picasa has supported dng and raw for a very long time for free, so why can’t adobe or microsoft fix this omission?
@Robbie, I’m glad you have found a solution for your tethering requirements. I need to write a followup tethering post to include FastPictureViewer, Lightroom 3 and the various Nikon SDK based tethering options that have cropped up since this original post.
Personally I think that it is Nikon that should be resolving the omission of a free tethering solution. By publishing an SDK they have allowed third parties to fill this gap for users with newer cameras. Unfortunately users with old cameras are still left out in the cold and I’d be surprised if Nikon actually does something to resolve this issue at this late stage in the product lifecycle.
@Russ, I’ll add ControlMyNikon to the list of software to be reviewed in the followup article. Thanks for pointing it out!
One needs to register to access the script ‘Remove Installer OS Check’ (removechk.zip).
Searching the Net for ‘removechk.zip’ leads to dead links where this file has been removed.
If you really want to make this file available to a broader audience, why not make it available without registration at some open web-site?
If Adobe is serious about DNG then it should become public.
My suspicion is that Adobe might some day tell us DNGer that to view our images we’d need to buy this or that software from them.
@Hans, Removechk is not my code so where it is hosted is not my choice, unless I wanted to take it as my own and I wasn’t comfortable doing that.
I’m a little disappointed that Adobe hasn’t made a final DNG codec available that would also work on Windows XP. In the interim the codec pack available here seems a good choice though there is a $9.99 USD price tag attached (as at 6 August, 2010).
Matt, I see your point and agree with you.
Meanwhile I searched the net and found a “Remove Installer OS Check” utility that works as well. (http://lazynetworkadmin.com/content/view/20/1/)
If people were only using some sort of a license like “Creative Commons” (http://creativecommons.org/“) more often, then all others (incl. search engines) would know what they’re allowed to do with a certain digital item.
Glad to see that this site IS making use of the Creative Commons license options.
However, the above mentioned solution worked fine for me.
Thank you for providing the information.
@Hans, Thanks for providing that link to an alternate utility to perform the same “remove OS check” step. Much appreciated.
This solution so NEARLY works for me in Windows7 ~ it installed the Adobe codec fine, and the thumbnails now look like images in Windows Photo Gallery now (rather than PS symbols), but I still can’t see the pictures ~ so near, yet so far 🙁
@Caroline, Hadn’t even thought of trying this tip since I upgraded to Windows 7. I would really have hoped Adobe would have refreshed the installer by now but for whatever reason this hasn’t happened. Why not vote for the feature request and see if we can make this happen?
A free script for enabling the viewing of DNG files in Windows Explorer for Vista and Windows 7 64 bit systems is available from Olli’s DNG Photo tools at http://www.visualbakery.com/Tools/PhotoTools.aspx
It works great for me. Images can still not be viewed in Windows Photo Gallery, but I use Lightroom now so that is not a problem for me.
I find it really helps to be able to use the new features in Windows 7 Explorer for viewing photos for my DNG files.
Really disappointed by the lack of Adobe support for VIABLE operating systems that are used everyday by millions of users (currently Adobe has already abandoned support for Vista as well). I can not and will not buy a new PC every two years to support OS bloat. If I cannot find an Adobe solution that will run on my XP system I will look elsewhere, if DNG really is the answer it should be available for XP, I suspect that Adobe will find, sometime in the near future, that supporting a free project is just not worth their time and they will just walk away. Screwing everybody that bought into the RAW format for the rest of us hype.
@Mike, I can understand how people would feel this way. As I’ve just finished completely moving to Windows 7 the operating system support change isn’t an issue for me but it will be for others.
Codec support was added to XP via a later .net update. In Vista it was supported by the OS. In Windows 7 I’ve been informed the results are finally stable. I have been told they tried to get the Vista codec working (and i believe them) but in the long run cut their losses and dropped Vista support. I am curious what was the Achilles heel that necessitated this. A guess would be the international support (e.g. Double byte Asian characters) but I have no data to back that up. I will see if I can find out why.
Others have developed paid DNG codecs. I am wondering how the Adobe Labs equivalent compares with these.