Many digital camera manufacturers on the other hand have not created codecs that support the framework and both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. That’s where the FastPictureViewer WIC Codec pack comes into play which is a collection of digital camera codecs for about 300 different digital camera models that make use of the framework under 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7.

The codecs are then automatically used by programs that support WIC which includes most of Microsoft’s own software programs including Windows Media Center, Windows Live Photo Gallery, the developer’s Fast Picture Viewer and all Microsoft .net Framework 3 applications.

The digital camera codec pack is currently available as a beta version from the developer’s website. It adds support for the following formats:

• *.tga, *.tpic Truevision Targa (TGA) Supports most format flavors: uncompressed and RLE-encoded grayscale 8 and 16-bit, true color 15, 16, 24 and 32-bit (with alpha) and 8-bit indexed with 15, 16, 24 and 32-bit colormap.
• *.dng Adobe Digital Negative BETA
• *.cr2, *.crw Canon Raw Images BETA
• *.raf Fuji Raw Images BETA
• *.3pr, *.fff Hasselblad Raw Images BETA
• *.kdc, *.dcr Kodak Raw Images BETA
• *.raw, *.rwl Leica Raw Images BETA
• *.mrw Minolta Raw Images BETA
• *.nef, *.nrw Nikon Raw Images BETA
• *.orf Olympus Raw Images BETA
• *.rw2 Panasonic Raw Images BETA
• *.pef Pentax Raw Images BETA
• *.sr2, *.arw Sony Raw Images BETA
• All formats Thumbnail provider for XP Provides support for thumbnail views in Windows XP Explorer, for all the above format variants.

The developer is currently investigating possibilities to add additional codecs to the codec pack. Check out the website for more information.