If you own a semi-serious digital camera, and run either Windows 7 or Windows Vista – then you might be pleasantly pleased to hear that Microsoft has now provided support for handing RAW photo files.

Windows Live Photo Gallery is a free download which allows you to import, organise, edit, publish and upload your photos.  Yesterday, Microsoft released the codec which supports RAW files – download it here…

If you haven’t come across Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 (did I mention it was free?), then I’d encourage you to check it out – it enhances the basic photo handling capabilities of Windows quite significantly!  On top of the usual photo editing and touch-up tools, you can also quickly create panoramas, movies, slide shows and other fun stuff.  It also makes it utterly simple to upload to places like SkyDrive, Facebook for Flickr.

If you want more in-depth information on RAW support, then read more at the official blog.