CRW to BMP Converter
FileFlip converts CRW to BMP entirely inside your browser, using ImageMagick compiled to WebAssembly. The file is never uploaded to a server: it is read off your disk, converted on your own machine, and saved back by the browser. That means no file-size limit, no queue and no account.
How do I convert a CRW file to BMP?#
- Drop your CRW file onto the converter at the top of this page, or click it to pick one from your computer. You can add as many as you like.
- Leave the target set to BMP and the conversion starts on its own. FileFlip downloads 14.1 MB of WebAssembly the first time and nothing after that, then runs ImageMagick on your own machine.
- Save the BMP file. Your browser writes it straight to your downloads folder, because there was never a server holding it.
Does converting CRW to BMP lose quality?#
No. Converting CRW to BMP writes the data out again without discarding any of it, so nothing that was in the CRW file is lost on the way. What changes is the size of the file, not what is inside it.
Is it safe to convert CRW files online?#
Yes, because nothing is uploaded. FileFlip converts CRW files inside the browser tab you already have open, using WebAssembly builds of the same engines a desktop converter would install. Your file is read from your own disk into the page's memory, and no request carrying it is ever made.
You do not have to take that on trust. Open your browser's network panel, run a conversion, and you will see the engine come down and your file go nowhere. There is no upload, no server-side copy, no retention window, and no account tied to what you converted.
How FileFlip works lists every engine, its version and its download size, and shows how to check for yourself that nothing leaves your machine.
What CRW to BMP actually does to the file#
Converting CRW to BMP runs on ImageMagick, downloads 14.1 MB of WebAssembly the first time and nothing after that, writes the data out again without discarding any of it.
| Engine | ImageMagick |
|---|---|
| Conversion path | One step: CRW → BMP |
| Downloaded to your browser | 14.1 MB, once, then cached by your browser |
| Quality | Lossless |
| You get back | One file |
| Where it runs | In a background worker, so the page stays responsive |
Worth knowing before you start:
- camera raw is demosaiced with ImageMagick's defaults, which will not match the camera's own rendering
- some cameras write lossily compressed raw, so the source is not always a complete sensor record
What is a CRW file?#
A CRW file holds raw sensor data in Camera Image File Format, the CIFF container Canon specified in February 1997 and used for its early PowerShot compacts and its first digital EOS bodies until the TIFF-based CR2 format replaced it in 2004.
Nobody chooses CRW today; it turns up when opening an archive shot on an EOS D30, D60, 10D or 300D, or on a PowerShot G-series or S-series compact from the same years.
Convert CRW to DNG when archiving old photos so they stay readable by software that no longer bothers with CIFF, or to JPEG when the picture just needs to be shared.
What is a BMP file?#
A BMP file holds a device-independent bitmap: a pixel grid stored with a Microsoft-defined header and, in the overwhelming majority of BMP files in the wild, no compression at all.
Use BMP when a Windows-native application, printer driver, or legacy tool specifically expects it, or when pixel data has to be stored with zero encoding overhead for a processing pipeline.
Convert BMP to PNG or JPEG for anything leaving that pipeline, since both produce a far smaller file and PNG matches BMP's lossless, generation-safe quality.
CRW to BMP questions people ask#
What camera made a CRW file?
CRW came from Canon's first digital SLRs and several early PowerShot compacts, specifically the EOS D30, D60, 10D and 300D, the PowerShot G1 through G6, the PowerShot S30 through S70, and the PowerShot Pro1. Canon switched to CR2 in 2004, so a CRW file is at least two decades old, and its EXIF data names the exact body.
What software still opens CRW files?
Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw and Lightroom Classic still decode CRW, as do the open-source raw tools built on LibRaw and dcraw, including darktable, RawTherapee and digiKam. Canon shipped Digital Photo Professional and ZoomBrowser EX with the cameras that wrote CRW, though the current versions of Canon's software are aimed at newer bodies.
What is the difference between CRW and CR2?
CRW uses Canon's CIFF container, which identifies itself with the marker HEAPCCDR in the first bytes of the file and is unrelated to any other image format, while CR2 is built on TIFF and stores the sensor data as lossless JPEG. Canon changed over in 2004, and the two need separate decoders even though both hold Canon raw data.
Should I convert CRW files to DNG?
Converting CRW to DNG is worth doing for long-term storage, because DNG has a published specification while CIFF support depends on decoders that were reverse-engineered years ago. The conversion carries the sensor data across without re-rendering it, so image quality is unchanged, and some Canon-specific metadata is what gets dropped. Adobe only published DNG in 2004, by which point Canon was already moving from CRW to CR2, so shooting DNG was never an option on these cameras.