I see a lot of disgruntled posters on the Internet complaining that they have been abandoned by Adobe because they won't or can't afford to upgrade to the latest version of Photoshop and, so, their new camera's RAW format is not supported by earlier versions of Photoshop, or, more specifically, Adobe Camera RAW.

We had a recent case where someone had just upgraded to a Canon EOS-5D Mark II, but they were using Photoshop CS3. Adobe Camera RAW for CS3 does not and will never support 5D Mark II RAW files natively.

But there is a work around!

Adobe has its own, universal, RAW image file format, called DNG (Digital NeGative). Some cameras, like selected Pentax DSLRs, can save directly to a DNG format RAW file. But even if your camera can't do that, its native RAW file can probably be converted to DNG format using Adobe's free DNG Converter utility.

You can find the latest version of the Adobe DNG Converter to download and general information about DNG here:

[URL]http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/[/URL]

Once you have installed the DNG Converter, you can batch convert as many proprietary RAW format files as you like in one simple operation. The resulting DNG RAW files will then be compatible with earlier versions of Photoshop, all the way back to version CS, though ensure that you have updated to the latest version of Adobe Camera RAW for that version of Photoshop.

It's a similar message to Adobe Photoshop Elements Users. The earliest version of PS Elements to support RAW import was version 3, and you should be able to import the DNG converted RAW files from the latest supported cameras.

Using Adobe's DNG converter does mean a little extra work, but it does work if you don't have the very latest version of Photoshop, or - indeed - Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

Is there a difference between the quality potential of a native RAW files and its DNG converted version - possibly, but the difference is likely to be marginal. But that's for another update!