I have a Canon Rebel camera and I love it, but I can't read CRW/RAW format photos. I do have PhotoShop 7 and Paint Shop Pro, neither of these graphic programs will load the RAW photos. I don't want to spend 300 plus dollars to upgrade PhotoShop. Microsoft does have a program that will let you view RAW format but that's all, you can't edit with it. Canon has one also but it is the same. I told my problem to a geekie friend of mine and he said, don't you have IrfanView ? I said, "Never heard of it" (that's from The Dirty Dozen movie) He said download it and give it a try, that will do what you want to do with RAW photos. I went to
http://www.irfanview.com/
installed it and loaded a test RAW photo, then saved it in a non-compresed TIFF format. Then I was able to load it in PhotoShop 7 or Paint Shop Pro. My problem was solved for free. Read more and download it for free here:
http://www.irfanview.com/
Thanks for the tip JH