Convert Canon CR2 to TIFF — in your browser, no upload

What is a CR2 file?

CR2 is Canon's classic RAW format, used across EOS DSLRs from the 350D in the mid-2000s through to the final DSLR bodies before Canon's mirrorless switch. The name stands for "Canon Raw version 2", and the file is a TIFF-based container holding the sensor's untouched mosaic data plus an embedded JPEG preview. Because it stores unprocessed data, most image viewers, web uploads and messaging apps can't open or preview a CR2 — it has to be developed into a standard format like JPG first.

What is TIFF, and why convert CR2 to it?

TIFF is a lossless, high-fidelity image container long used in photography, printing and archiving. It stores the full developed image without compression artifacts and is the format many editing and print workflows expect as a master file. TIFFs are large, but they preserve every detail of the conversion.

Convert Canon CR2 to TIFF when you need an archival-quality master — for print, for handing into a professional editing pipeline (Photoshop, Affinity, print RIPs), or for long-term storage of the developed image outside the proprietary RAW. Pixadel decodes the CR2 fully and writes an uncompressed TIFF, so nothing is thrown away. Expect the largest file of any output here; for sharing or the web, choose JPG instead.

Why convert CR2 with Pixadel

Canon's own Digital Photo Professional (DPP) and Adobe Lightroom can open CR2, but both are heavy desktop installs built for detailed editing — overkill when you simply need shareable JPGs. Pixadel does the one job you actually want in that moment: it converts a whole shoot to JPG locally, in seconds, with nothing to install and no account. Drop a folder of CR2s, pick a quality, and download a ZIP. Every file is decoded on your own machine — it never leaves your browser.

How CR2 → TIFF conversion works

Under the hood, each CR2 is fully demosaiced with the camera's white balance and colour space before it's encoded to JPG, so the result matches what the camera itself would have produced — not a quick thumbnail. You control the JPEG quality (default 92) and can halve the output size for faster, lighter exports. A worker pool processes several files at once while keeping memory in check, so even a card full of 30-megapixel CR2s converts smoothly without freezing the tab.

Frequently asked questions