Indexing RAW images, is it possible?

At one time Microsoft did offer an add-on pack for explorer in the form of an "Image Codec pack" to work with their Photos app that may have made the access of the data available to explorer possible but this is no longer available.

Not sure why it was withdrawn - it could be that there are a myriad of different formats, and a lot of these are Proprietary and need a licence in order to support them in applications. the downloads are also no longer available, which is unusual for Microsoft who normally just leave this sort of thing online as unsupported "Abandonware"

This suggests to me that legal matters were involved at some levels

I would personally suggest that you look at Adobe Bridge as this provides all the functionality required for image management, is made by a specialist image manipulation company with a continuous update policy, and it's free ...

barman58 said:

I would personally suggest that you look at Adobe Bridge as this provides all the functionality required for image management, is made by a specialist image manipulation company with a continuous update policy, and it's free ...

Click to expand...

I second the Adobe recommendation. I've been a photography enthusiast my whole life and I've used Adobe Bridge, Photoshop, and Lightroom ever since they were introduced.

barman58 said:

At one time Microsoft did offer an add-on pack for explorer in the form of an "Image Codec pack" to work with their Photos app that may have made the access of the data available to explorer possible but this is no longer available.

Not sure why it was withdrawn - it could be that there are a myriad of different formats, and a lot of these are Proprietary and need a licence in order to support them in applications. the downloads are also no longer available, which is unusual for Microsoft who normally just leave this sort of thing online as unsupported "Abandonware"

This suggests to me that legal matters were involved at some levels

I would personally suggest that you look at Adobe Bridge as this provides all the functionality required for image management, is made by a specialist image manipulation company with a continuous update policy, and it's free ...

Click to expand...

Hi Barman58,
Thank for your reply. I installed the Microsoft Raw Image Extension. I am just trying to see if indexing RAW images with Microsoft tools is possible, I got mixed results as described in my previous messages: Explorer is able to extract Exif Meta data from the RAW images, but is apparently not considers these extracted Meta data for indexation and this seems a bit odd. I am using DxO Photolab, a desktop app to manage the RAW meta data, and Photoprism to do it on my NAS.

There are a lot of options already available to extract, edit, and even create Photo metadata after the image is created.

One I have used to correct/ edit and tag images [not my own which are always tagged in Lightroom when initially processed]


This could form the basis of a catalogue for an image library project