The simple way to open CR2 files on a PC
If you need to open CR2 files, you probably own, or once owned, a Canon EOS DSLR or a PowerShot that shoots RAW. CR2 is the format those cameras used for well over a decade, which means many people have hard drives full of them and no quick way to look. Double-clicking one may show only a placeholder, and a full editing suite is a heavy thing to launch just to find one picture.
CR2 Viewer is a dedicated window for that job. Each CR2 carries a JPEG the camera rendered when you pressed the shutter; when that JPEG is nine-tenths of the full sensor resolution or larger, the viewer reads it directly, so the picture is up as soon as the file is. If the stored JPEG is only a small one, the viewer develops the sensor data itself instead.
Set it as the app for .cr2 and every Canon RAW opens straight to the photo. Arrow keys page to the neighboring shots, and ordinary JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP or TIFF images sitting in that folder are part of the sequence as well.
Bulk convert CR2 to JPG on Windows
Old Canon archives are usually the reason people search for this: years of RAW files that family members cannot open. Open any CR2 from the folder, choose Convert image, and pick whole folder instead of a single image. Every photo in that folder, but not its subfolders, is written out to the format you choose.
JPG is the usual pick for sharing and printing services; TIFF keeps more for later editing. PNG, BMP, ICO and PDF are offered too. If a converted copy is already in the destination, you decide whether that copy is skipped, kept next to the new one, or overwritten. Converted files are developed from the RAW sensor data, with the camera's JPEG used only as a fallback, and the CR2s themselves are never modified.
CR2 vs CR3: which Canon cameras this covers
Canon moved its newer cameras to the CR3 format, while CR2 belongs to the generation before: most Rebel bodies made before 2019, the 5D, 6D and 7D families up to the 5D Mark IV, 6D Mark II and 7D Mark II, the 80D and many more. This viewer is built for CR2 only. If your files end in .cr3, they need a CR3 viewer rather than this one.
Not sure which you have? Look at the extension in Explorer. A card from an older EOS body will be full of IMG_0001.CR2-style names; a mirrorless EOS R body writes .CR3.
See the Canon AF points and shot details
Press I to open the info panel. It reports which body and lens took the frame, the exposure triangle (shutter, f-number, ISO) and the focal length, together with the basics: name, file size, pixel dimensions, location on disk and dates.
The optional Professional Pack adds tools for sorting a shoot. Show focus point, toggled with P, outlines the AF points Canon marked as in focus, so a near-miss on a portrait is obvious. Compare, on C, sets up to four frames from the same burst side by side to mark Keep or Reject, with the burst gap adjustable from half a second to five seconds in Settings.
