A Guide to Find and Install Canon's Free Software

Canon digital SLR cameras come with a DVD offering free software, including EOS Utility, Digital Photo Professional, Picture Style Editor, and Zoombrowser EX. You can do all kinds of things with this software - copy photos onto your PC, organize your pictures, edit your photos. If you lost track of your CD, you can find the software using this guide. It isn't quite as good as having access to the entire group of Adobe's image processing and organization software, but it also doesn't cost over a thousand bucks. Free is great.

EOS Capture Utility. This program enables you to connect your camera to your desktop and use it remotely. You can use your desktop to have a live preview from your camera. You can alter any of the specs with your PC. You can take pictures, and have the images saved on the PC rather than or in addition to the SD card. There are a lot of cool ways to use Canon EOS Utility. You can read about how to download and install canon EOS Utility here.

Digital Photo Professional. Digital Photo Professional (DPP) allows you to process RAW images and modify pics. Each of the things that you would complete with Lightroom or Photoshop - i.e. curves, color temperature, etc - can be completed with DPP. It’s not as complete as either Lightroom or Photoshop, but if you’re not ready to spend hundreds of dollars on the Adobe suite you can start with this free Canon software. Lightroom is a large investment by itself, and Photoshop is even more. Install Digital Photo Professional and get started with that.

Picture Style Editor. If you must develop RAW image files, then Picture Style Editor is a different way to change the development settings of RAW photos. It's great for batch working RAW images. Download PSE yourself and experiment with it to see all that it can do.

Zoombrowser EX. You can keep your digital picture collection organized with Canon's Zoombrowser EX. It allows you to copy your photos from your SD card and save them on the desktop. You can order and view pictures, and you can also do some simple editing stuff. Get Zoombrowser EX to find out the things it can do for you.

These applications can be quite helpful, especially if you haven't purchased professional grade tools. Use the free stuff you have, and if you instinctively tossed your Canon utilities DVD see this post to help you download and install each of the software for free.