About CR3 (Canon RAW v3)
CR3 replaced CR2 as Canon's RAW format in 2018, first appearing on the EOS M50 and now used across the EOS R mirrorless line and recent DSLRs. Under the hood it swaps CR2's TIFF structure for an ISO base media container — the same family as MP4 — and adds C-RAW, an optional compressed mode that cuts file size roughly in half with a small quality tradeoff.
As with any RAW format, a CR3 is the sensor's output before in-camera processing, which makes it ideal for serious editing and inconvenient for everything else. Newer formats also lag in software support, so CR3 files from a recent body sometimes will not open even in tools that handle CR2 fine.
You can convert CR3 to a universal format right here in your browser — free, private, nothing uploaded, no account. Creating CR3 is not supported, and would not make sense outside a Canon camera anyway. The rendering is neutral, so expect colors that may differ from Canon's own processing.
Strengths
- Canon's current format, carrying the full sensor data from modern EOS R bodies
- C-RAW option keeps most RAW flexibility at meaningfully smaller sizes
- Modern container design with richer embedded previews and metadata than CR2
Limitations
- Newer format, so older software and some tools still cannot open it
- Files are large and unusable in most apps until converted
- This site can read CR3 but not write it
- Neutral rendering may differ from the color science in Canon's software