CR2 is the RAW format Canon used in its DSLRs for well over a decade — the 5D Mark II and III, the 7D, the 60D, and the entire Rebel line all wrote it. If you have an old drive full of shoots from that era, you have probably discovered that modern machines are not always friendly to it: blank thumbnails in the file manager, photo apps that refuse to open anything, upload forms that reject the files outright. The images themselves are perfectly fine. The container is just inconvenient.
JPEG fixes the access problem permanently. Every browser, phone, photo app, and website form accepts it, and the files are dramatically smaller — a 25 MB CR2 from a 5D Mark III typically lands somewhere around 2 to 4 MB at the default quality setting. That is the difference between an archive you can actually browse, email, and back up cheaply, and one that sits untouched because nothing opens it.
This converter does the whole job inside your browser using WebAssembly. Your CR2 files are decoded and re-encoded on your own machine — nothing is uploaded, which matters when the folder holds client work, family photos, or anything else you would rather not hand to a stranger's server. There is no signup and no fee; the engine downloads once (about 5 MB) on first use and is cached by your browser, so later conversions start instantly. A quality slider, set to 85 by default, lets you decide how hard to compress, and you can choose to strip EXIF metadata if you are publishing the results.
One caveat worth knowing up front: RAW files do not contain finished colors, and this tool renders them neutrally. Canon's own software applies Picture Styles, lens corrections, and Canon's particular white balance interpretation, so your JPEGs may look a little flatter or cooler than the previews you remember from the camera's LCD or from Digital Photo Professional. For sharing and archiving that is usually acceptable — but keep the original CR2 files if you ever plan a careful edit.
Why convert CR2 to JPEG?
- Open shoots from older Canon DSLRs on computers that no longer ship a CR2 codec
- Shrink 20-30 MB RAW files down to a few megabytes for email, web uploads, and cheap backups
- Conversion runs entirely on your device — client photos and family archives are never uploaded
- Free, no account, and a quality slider (default 85) to balance file size against detail
How it works
- Step 1
Drop your files
Drag your CR2 files into the converter above, or click “Choose files”. Batches are welcome.
- Step 2
Pick your settings
JPEG is preselected. Adjust quality or size if you want, or keep the defaults.
- Step 3
Convert and download
Conversion runs locally in your browser. Download files individually or grab everything as a zip.
Frequently asked questions
- Are my CR2 files uploaded to a server during conversion?
- No. The decoding and JPEG encoding run inside your browser via WebAssembly, so the photos never leave your computer. The only download involved is the conversion engine itself — about 5 MB, fetched once and cached by your browser.
- Why do the colors look different from Canon's software or the in-camera preview?
- A RAW file stores unprocessed sensor data, and every program that opens one has to decide how to render it. Canon's tools apply Picture Styles and Canon's own color science; this converter uses a neutral rendering instead. The result can look slightly flatter or differently balanced. If exact Canon colors matter for a particular image, process that one in Digital Photo Professional and use this tool for the bulk of the archive.
- What happens to the EXIF metadata — capture date, camera settings, GPS?
- It carries over into the JPEG by default, which is what you want for a personal archive. If you are posting images publicly, there is an option to strip EXIF during conversion so location data and serial numbers do not travel with the file.
- What quality setting should I use?
- The default of 85 is a good balance for most purposes — visually clean with a big size reduction. Go up to 90-95 if the JPEGs are destined for printing or further editing; drop toward 70-75 for web galleries where bandwidth matters more than pixel-level detail. Because everything runs locally, trying two settings and comparing costs you nothing.
- Does converting to JPEG throw away image data?
- Yes — that is inherent to the format, not a flaw in the tool. A CR2 holds 14-bit sensor data with room to recover highlights and shadows; a JPEG is 8-bit and lossy. For viewing and sharing the difference is invisible, but the editing headroom is gone, so treat the JPEG as a delivery copy and the CR2 as the negative.