RawShooter Essentials and the 40D - update
Much as I like RSE, this workaround now seems like a lot of trouble when you consider how good Raw Therapee is, and I now recommend RT over RSE.
I’ll leave the link to the “hacked” version of RSE (at the bottom of this page) for a little while longer, but I intend to remove it within the next month or so. If you want it, get it quickly.
Keith, 27 March 2008.
RawShooter Essentials (RSE) is was by far my favourite RAW conversion application, but when Adobe bought out Pixmantec (the authors of this software) development ceased, meaning that no Canon DSLR after the 30D is supported.
There’s a surprisingly simple way round this though, courtesy of a DPReview contributor called PhotoHans.
Firstly, you need the very latest version of RSE.
After making a back-up, open the RSE exe file (RawShooter.exe) in a hex editor such as PSPad.
Replace every instance of “10D” (for example) with “40D” and save the file. It is important that the saved file is identical in size to the original, so searching for “10D” and replacing it with “40D” should ensure this.
Note that doing this will mean that RSE will no longer be unable to process 10D RAW files.
Tip: if you use PSPad, tick the “As Text” box in the Search dialog.
That sets RSE up for the next stage in the process.
Download the latest (free) Adobe DNG converter.
Convert your 40D RAW (CR2) files in the DNG converter.
I actually set the converter to use my card reader as the file source, and convert the files as I copy them from the CF card.
RSE will now happily open, process and convert your 40D DNG files in exactly the same way that it will edit any of the RAW files it was designed to handle.
OK, it’s a bit of a kludge, and it means that proprietary Canon benefits like Highlight Tone Priority won’t be accessible.
But because RSE is so good at converting Canon files (and I can now confirm that this applies equally to 40D DNGs) I regard this as a job well worth doing.
Because this is becoming rather popular, I’ve decided to make a zipped version of the updated RSE exe file available online to help those of you who have had problems with the hex-editing stage.
Download it here.