CANON G10 - Trying to get started shooting and downloading RAW

Hi folks.. I have the G10 which I have been using for 2-3 years and have always just shot my work as max size jpegs.. I have long been aware that RAW is where I should be at and I have tried getting into it a few times but have had a few basic problems that have put me off, mainly downloading the images to my computer..

..so here goes, and straight away I admit my questions will probably be dumbass ones to a few of you!

First of all, I have downloaded and installed the free RAWSHOOTER software as I read good reviews.. What do I do next?! I thought I could just plug the camera in and open my pics in this software but there are no images displayed?! This has made me think that I have to perhaps download via the supplied Canon Software FIRST, THEN open them in RAWSHOOTER? I hope not as I just want a ''one stop shop'' to download and edit all within the one programme?

Any help and advice will be much appreciated, please keep it nice and simple for me!!

Cheers. Steve.

Adobe acquired Pixmantec, the developers of RawShooter, over five years ago and no futher development was done to the program so I doubt it even supports Raw files from a Canon G10. I'm even surprised you can find RawShooter for download.

My advice would be to install the Canon's Digital Photo Professional that came with your camera.

If you are connecting the camera to your computer by usb cable, the best practice would be to use either the downloader plugin in Canon's Zoombrowser or Canon's EOS Utility if it was supplied with your camera (I'm not sure with which model EOS Utility started supporting G-series) to download the RAW files to your hard drive and then launch DPP.
However, I would advise getting a card reader ($15-20) to use in transferring the files. They are safer, faster, more trouble-free than a direct camera-computer hookup and won't run down your battery. With a card reader you will be able to transfer the files by simply dragging or using copy/paste.
The version of DPP supplied with the G10 was 3.5; the current one is 3.11.1. After you have installed DPP from the disc, it would be worthwhile to update it from the Canon site.

fotomast wrote in post #13352175
...mainly downloading the images to my computer..
...

By "downloading" I'm assuming that you mean copying your images from your camera's memory card to your computer.

There are a zillion ways to do that, but it's essentially the same whether you're downloading jpegs or RAW files. How were you downloading your pictures when you were shooting jpeg's?

There are a couple of aspects of RAW files that is somewhat confusing at first. RAW files need to be "converted" to be displayed and it is possible that some programs you currently use won't display the images from RAW files.

Another tricky concept is that edits to RAW files don't actually change the image data. The edits are only applied when you (using the RAW editing program) save the RAW file as a jpeg or tiff. When I first started experimenting with RAW files, I couldn't figure out why the edits I made in DPP (Canon's Digital Photo Professional) couldn't be viewed in any other program.

Make it simple on yourself by sticking with the standard software for now - Canon's Zoom Brower and DPP should have been included with your camera. You may need to spend some time reading the instructions but these two programs will do everything you want.

RAWshooter can download files from a USB-connected camera, or it can import photos from a USB reader with memory card inserted, then copies the photos to the user-sepecified folder location. While Rawshooter itself does not compile a 'database', early editions of Windows would not 'see' RAW files, and you had to use a program like RAWshooter to 'see' the files to be transferred from one place to another. If you have Windows set up to be able to see and list RAW files (.CR2) I believe (rusty memory!) that you can simply use Windows features to copy RAW files from memory card to a folder location on the harddrive, and RAWshooter will be able to find them all when you tell it which folder to look in.

But as someone else pointed out, Rawshooter probably cannot handle G10 RAW files, and that is probably the issue you are really running into!

Since you do have Rawshooter, you might (or might not, as too much time has passed) be able to find that you can upgrade to Lightroom for only $99
[edit] upgrade from RAWshooter to Lightroom for $99 was apparently only when LR1 was first made available years ago.