Is there any hope of older Canon CRW RAW format being supported?

I think there's "hope" for all file formats - but I think the real hope is for proper DNG support. If/when that happens, the question of supporting individual cameras will become more or less academic.

Can you open the RAW file in Photoshop Raw Converter?
If so you can then convert the .crw file into .dng then import the .dng files into Aperture but these extra steps can be a bit annoying

See - that doesn't work because Aperture doesn't really support DNG correctly.

Ouch, so you can not import dng files at all into Aperture?

Only DNG files for cameras it supports anyway.

Ian

I also need Canon PowerShot G1 support. I logged in to ask this same question. I have over 10,000 images shot with my Canon PowerShot G1. If Aperture is about archiving, organizing, and presenting my (best) work, then I need support for the G1 RAW format. If you think that G1 camera is not new enough or not professional enough, remember that great images can be taken with a cardboard box, tin foil, and a straight pin.

Mac OS X (10.4.4)

While it's nice that you took some good shots with that camera, the practical truth is that it's tough to have enough resources to support the RAW format every single camera on the planet.

Given that professionals, in their use, really have 10-15 cameras that they tend to use, I'd figure support for them would come first. Why not convert your PowerShot G1 photos to TIFF files via DPP and import those into Aperture?

This is why DNG support is so important. If Apple had real DNG support it wouldn't need to worry about "exotic" or "obsolete" raw formats - they could support the cameras they like directly, and relegate the others to DNG. That's what Adobe does for old versions of Photoshop - and it's a good compromise.

Nono, sorry if I was unclear.

I don't personally use DNG _at all_

However, I have some files that are not supported by Aperture - S2 RAF, G1 CRW. (Haven't checked the D30/D60 CRWs yet)

Although I would love it if Aperture supported these raws directly, I think this is unlikely. Instead I would like to see them focus on getting DNG support fixed (it is an advertised feature which does not work correctly) - then instantly support for a lot of older or exotic cameras would be a nonissue.

Seeing as Aperture doesn't support DNG correctly, I would definitely not recommend the format for Aperture users. Hopefully this will be fixed soon. We'll see how it goes.

"...the practical truth is that it's tough to have enough resources to support the RAW format..."

Experts have told me that most raw file formats are just TIFF/EP format, slightly customized. This is not cracking hieroglyphics. iView Media Pro, a program made by a single man, was able to support all of my cameras including the Canon PowerShot G1 and G3.

Using Adobes DNG Converter app to change my files to DNG would be a viable workaround. Apparently, Aperture does not support DNG properly. In the end, converting all of my G1 images to DNG is not as appealing as just adding G1 CRW support into the OS. OS support is much more elegant.

I wish that the raw support in the OS were user upgradable so that I could program my own G1 plug-in or get some open source support. Of course, opening up the interpretation of raw formats to third parties might introduce a thorny set of problems.

Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Not really. Most raw formats are stored in a TIFF-EP format, but the data itself is proprietary to the camera and hardly universal. The reason so many programs support so many formats can largely be credited to Dave Coffin, who wrote and maintains the freeware DCRaw application, which supports a vast array of raw formats.

DCRaw can do this because all it does is decode the raw files, it doesn't have much in the way of image manipulation features, and doesn't have a commercial user-base to support. He also adds cameras incrementally as they appear.

The situation is quite different for an application like Aperture, ACR, C1Pro - these have to keep many many other features supported, and they need to maintain a consistent output range for supported cameras and filetypes. As a consequence they do a lot of processing to the files that DCRaw doesn't do - even if they use dcraw internals (ACR at least used to, dunno if it still does)

iView, GraphicConverter, and apps of their ilk generally don't have their own raw routines at all, they rely on dcraw directly, or on manufacturer-supplied sdk "black box" code. As such, the support in these apps tends to be extremely primitive. In iView's case it often doesn't even decode the raw file at all, it will just pull the embedded preview out for display purposes. (Which is a very, very smart thing to do for a catalog app, but not a good conversion plan, since it isn't actually converting anything.)

The upshot is that sophisticated decoding routines do in fact take development resources. There will always be some camera that some person has which is off the radar of any given developer. That's where DNG is so important - Adobe is taking pains to support as many formats as humanly possible - it just makes sense for Apple and others to leverage this support and free up resources in-house to focus on critical features of their program. (Wouldn't you rather see Apple fix, say, the layout tools, or noise reduction, or layered file support, or the metadata bugs, or ... instead of adding support for a camera you don't own and can no longer obtain? I sure would.)