Many digital cameras will compress their images into JPEG files, making them much easier to deal with for the average consumer. But, occasionally, you run across those that take their image capturing seriously who will set their cameras to save the files in “RAW Mode”. What that means depends on the model of camera. IrfanView is my preferred tool for viewing most images I run across in cases, and it usually does a great job of supporting even these RAW image formats. But, sometimes you want to get a second opinion…
Microsoft publishes a CODEC Pack that will enable its built-in viewers to also properly display most of the RAW image formats. It is available for download here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=26829