So I bought a card reader

And I can drag and drop the .cr2 files off the card onto my desktop. But I go to Photoshop 7.0 and choose open file .raw and it cannot find them.

Do I need to simply rename the files to .raw files, and open through Photoshop?

you need to download a different camera raw plugin for photoshop ( one that supports .cr2 ).
you can get them off adobe's site.

I doubt Photoshop 7 will know what to do with raw files. You'll need to do your raw conversion with the software that came with your camera, or similar, then save as tiffs or jpegs to open in PS.

Your problem has nothing to do with your card reader, but good work for buying one all the same

Try HERE

Does ACR even work in Photoshop7? If it does, its likely VERY outdated. As Damien suggests, use canon's DPP that came on disk with camera, or even RAWtherapee (free.)

joayne wrote in post #6192772
Try HERE

Nup, that's for CS. From memory, PS7 didn't have raw support.

You can't use non-current versions of Photoshop to work directly with any RAW files newer than the software; ACR updates only work with current versions. You can use the Adobe DNG Converter (http://www.adobe.com/p​roducts/dng/) which is free to convert the raw files to DNG format and then work with Photoshop CS or CS2, but PS 7 won't even support that. You're better off to either upgrade to newer software (newer PS) or use a different RAW converter including Canon's free Digital Photo Professional or I'd suggest Lightroom + use old Photoshop for edits of tiff or jpg's thus created.

PS7 effectively doesn't do RAW. Your best bet is to use DPP that comes with your camera, export to TIFF, then load them in PS7.

ACR FAQ: https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=244018

Right all, no support for 7 Sorry to give false hope.

Good suggestion from Tim

You're quite right in saying that PS7 doesn't do RAW. When I first got my 40D I was shooting in JPEG, but as soon as I started shooting in RAW I had to upgrade from PS7 to use ACR that would work with my RAW files.

The alternative, as someone else has already pointd out, is to use DPP that came with the camera to do the basic RAW processing, and then convert the files to TIFF or JPEG which can then be used in PS7.

The reason I didn't go this route is that I find ACR to be more user friendly for processing RAW images than DPP.