Windows photo viewer for RAW files with thumbnails

Hi all!

Hope someone is able to provide some direction. I am not what you would call "tech savvy". I have recently upgraded my laptop and and am now running Windows 11.

Edition Windows 11 Home
Version 21H2
Installed on ‎30/‎08/‎2022
OS build 22000.318
Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22000.318.0

I was previously running Windows 10 and while I seem to recall that I did have to download a driver to open RAW files I didn't have to do anything else to see thumbnails when I opened the folder and to arrow through the photos when full screen. I should note that I store my photos on an external hard drive and not in the cloud.

I have downloaded a driver to open my RAW files and while I can open pictures the dialoque box will open with every picture and ask how I want to open the file. Pretty annoying as you can imagine. So I can only open one picture at a time, have to choose how to open it each time, and I cannot arrow through all the photos in the folder. When I google for solutions it keeps bringing me to editing software sites where you have to make a purchase. I'm not interested in buying an app to view these pictures. I already have the full adobe suite of products and know I can use lightroom to open these but I don't want to have to open Lightroom to look through my Raw pics. (Typically I use Lightroom Classic, not cloud based) On my previous laptop I dumped my Raw files and video from my memory card into an organized folder on an external hard drive and then imported what I wanted to work on into lightroom. I would then export the edited files back into a subfolder so I would know where to find them.

So question is...is there a way I can view my photos which are stored on an external drive where I can open the folder, see thumbnails of all the images and be able to arrow through them when full screen? Hope someone out there has a solution for this! Thanks!

Do you have the Windows Raw image extension installed? That should give you thumbnails, if you have "view by icons" (small, medium, large, or extra large) selected for the folder. When you open a file, you should be able to choose "aways open with" for that file extension.

A free alternative for quickly looking through a large number of images is FastStone Image Viewer. It can do a lot more than just viewing, but it's good for that.

I have installed the Windows Raw Image Extension. When I open it it brings me to "Films and TV" where I can select my hard drive but it only shows my videos. I also don't get the "always open with' option when I open a picture file.
I could look at the Faststone image viewer and will if I can't get photos to work as it did on my old laptop.

Is it an option to go back to Windows 10 or is that just a dumb idea?

There should be no advantage to reverting to 10. the differences aren't major.

I have no idea what you mean by "when I open it". I thought it's basically just a codec (compressor/decompressor) that allows applications to open raw files.

What happens when you double click on a RAW file? If you're presented with a window that asks how you wish to open it, I suggest "photos", and choose "always". That will set photos as the default app for RAW files of that type. (Works for me, with Canon CR3 RAWs.)

Hmmm...did I download the wrong thing? See pictures attached where it asks to be opened?
The second picture is what comes up once I open it

Update.....
Not sure if I had to but installed a different Windows Raw extension which still didn't bring about the result I wanted. I was then looking around in "view" in the folder and the "...(see more)"to the right of view and found properties. Under 'properties" and "general" for "type of file(ARW)" it said "unknown". I selected Photos from the drop down box and voila everything changed to what I wanted! Perhaps I had previously selected "always open this type of file with" and chose the something incorrectly. Really not sure but happy to have this working the way I like it to! Thanks for your help @bobkn !

Open settings -apps -default apps and scroll down to and open Photos. You'll get the default option there by clicking on the small box right side.





I downloaded some test .raw files and the Photo app works ok.

It is old, but this works for me:


I couldn't get the Microsoft driver to work in Windows 11 so I use the above.