Recover 'Not the right kind of document' cr2's

[almorris]

Hi All, I lost about 20gb of cr2's when windows reformatted my backup drive from a 1tb to a 102gb drive. Some of the files were recovered from a data recovery firm, but I cant open the files. PS say's 'Not hte right kind of document'

I can see several preview images, but still cant open those files.

I tried to convert the cr2's to tiff and other formats but no luck in reformatting.

Also I'm not convinced that the recovered file's are actually the files I'm looking for. ie I think they've been renamed from another photo shoot.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

Take care,

Al Morris

[TCampbell]

CR2 files are Canon "RAW" files. RAW files always require special software or OS support in order to use them.  

For example, Canon provides "Digital Photo Professional" (DPP) with all of their cameras that can shoot RAW.  DPP is able to open and process RAW files.  Many 3rd party programs can also open RAW files if they have the correct RAW support update installed (e.g.  Photoshop or Lightroom).  The "catch" with Adobe software is that as Adobe comes out with newer versions, they stop providing those updates for the older versions.  If you have a recent camera model but an older version of Adobe software there may not be an update availalbe for you.

Finally... Microsoft themselves actually do provide RAW support for Windows so that you'll be able to browse and view the images in Windows.  But these are not installed automatically.  You have to download and install the support from the Microsoft site.

Apple provides RAW updates in the standard updates that are periodically provided for the OS -- no need to track down the correct RAW update to work with the camera.