Digital photography has conquered the world. Consumer cameras are very affordable and easy-to-use. Every grandma has one to take photos of the grandkids and flowers in her garden. Such cameras produce TIFF or JPEG images that can be later processed or printed. But professional photographers prefer professional solutions. Prosumer or professional cameras provide much better results but output RAW files. RAW files contain unprocessed data as it was captured by the sensor of the digital camera. It being known that every large company selling professional digital cameras develops its own proprietary raw format. Nikon introduced NEF (Nikon Electronic Format). Canon's raw format is CRW. The proprietary raw image format used by Olympus digital cameras is ORF.

Such proprietary raw formats can be opened only by special software bundled with the camera. ORF files can be further edited with Olympus Master or Olympus Studio software. NEF images are processed with Nikon View (versions 5 & 6) or Nikon Capture (versions 3 & 4). Canon includes Canon File Viewer Utility to view and process CRW files.

Common image viewers and converters do not support CRW, or NEF, or ORF. This was a headache to process such raw files until Softplicity developed Total Image Converter. This professional tool supports many RAW formats and can convert them to TIFF, JPEG, PDF, BMP, PNG or other formats. The advantage of Total Image Converter from CoolUtils is the widest list of image formats supported. It much more convenient to have all-in-one solution than installing several different programs. Total Image Converter can be found at http://www.coolutils.com/TotalImageConverter

Every photographer loves professional but easy-to-use solutions. Often image converters sacrifice usability to quality. They are overloaded with additional options and have a complicated interface. It takes hours to realize how they work. Not in case of Total Image Converter. It has a clear straightforward interface. Even a beginner will convert image files in minutes.

Professionals prefer store co called master archives as untouched RAW files. So they could later process them as they like. Thus it is very important not to delete the originals during conversion. Total Image Converter guarantees to preserve original source files.

The easiest way to deal with proprietary formats of digital cameras is to use proper software like Total Image Converter from CoolUtils.