How to Open and Convert RAW Camera Files (CR2, NEF, ARW)

If you shoot photography with a DSLR or Mirrorless camera (like Canon, Nikon, or Sony), you already know the power of shooting in RAW.

A RAW file (like .cr2, .nef, or .arw) is essentially a digital negative. It captures significantly more light, shadow, and color data than a standard JPEG, giving you massive flexibility to edit the image later.

The problem? RAW files are absolutely enormous—often exceeding 30MB or 40MB per photo. Even worse, they are essentially unreadable to most people without professional software like Adobe Lightroom Classic or Capture One.

If you are a photographer who needs to quickly send a preview gallary to a client, or a hobbyist who wants to quickly upload a shot to Instagram, dealing with RAW files can be a tedious bottleneck.

You need to rapidly convert those RAW files into compressed, universally viewable JPGs.

The Problem with Traditional Converters

If you are away from your main editing PC and need to convert a RAW file in a pinch, you might be tempted to use an online image converter.

This is a terrible idea for photographers:

1. File Size Limits: Your 45MB .arw file from your Sony A7IV will instantly hit the “File Too Large” paywall on 99% of free online tools.
2. Upload Times: If you want to convert an entire photoshoot (say, 100 RAW files totaling 3GB), it will literally take hours to upload that to a cloud server.
3. Intellectual Property: Uploading unedited, high-resolution original RAW files to an unknown, free web server is a massive risk to your copyright and client privacy.

The Professional Solution: Client-Side Conversion

We built the GetAnyFile Image Converter to handle professional photography architectures.

By utilizing ImageMagick WebAssembly, our tool processes massive RAW files directly against your computer’s RAM and CPU without ever uploading a single byte to the internet.

Why Photographers Love It:

• Total Privacy: Your unedited shoots never leave your laptop.
• Zero Upload Wait: You bypass your internet speed limit completely. If your local PC is fast, the conversion is fast.
• No File Caps: Drop a 100MB medium format RAW file into the browser. It will convert perfectly because we do not have server restrictions!

How to Convert RAW to JPG Free

No Lightroom? No problem.

1. Launch our RAW Image Converter tool.
2. Drag and drop your .cr2, .nef, .arw, .dng, or .raw files into the browser window.
3. Ensure the output format is selected as JPG (or PNG if you prefer lossless, though file sizes will be larger).
4. Set the quality slider to ~85% for an excellent balance of client-ready sharpness and lower file size.
5. Click Convert.

Our tool reads the embedded image data natively, processes the demosaicing algorithm in your browser, and instantly downloads the lightweight JPGs back to your hard drive.

Photography delivery should be easy. Stop letting massive files slow down your workflow.