PP changes not saved... sort of

I made some changes to a picture (changed from color to BW and cropped) in Digital Photo Professional, the software bundled with my XSi. I saved the changes and when I look at the image in DPP, everything is right. But, if I look at the image in it's folder using Windows Picture & Fax viewer (what I normally used to view pictures) or include it in an email, I get the old version of the picture. I've searched for duplicate files and can't find any.

Why would the image show up correctly in DPP but incorrectly in other programs and how do I fix this?

If you want to view your changes in an external program other than DPP, you will have to use the "Convert and Save" function or the "Batch Conversion"

I don't know anything about DPP, but if you're looking at RAW files this will happen as RAW files are never modified. Instead whatever changes you make are saved as metadata, and next time you look at it they're applied again. The changes are stored in a different version by different software, DPP and Photoshop ACR are incompatible, for example. ACR uses xmp files, Lightroom uses a central database, DPP I have no idea.

Generally once you've done your RAW adjustments you batch the images out to jpeg.

If you're seeing this with JPGs then this might not apply.

Wow, that was quick! Convert and save-I'm on my way...

BTW, this is a JPEG file.

Thanks for the help, it's greatly appreciated!

DPP uses the "recipe" data the same way for JPEG and TIFF as it does for RAW while viewing in DPP. In order to see the changes to your files in other programs, you have to save using what was mentioned above!