How to Download and Install Canon’s Picture Style Editor on Windows 7

Canon offers some useful free software to help you use your camera. Canon’s Picture Style Editor is a great example. The Picture Style Editor is another RAW image processing tool that let’s you edit color settings and then apply them to other RAW files.

The trouble is, even though Canon makes the latest version of the software freely available on its website, the software is designed so that you can’t download and install a new version unless you’ve already installed an older version from a disc. These CDs are included with each Canon camera, but it’s highly possible that you lost it or bought the camera second hand without a CD.

So is there a workaround, so that you can download the software and install it on Windows 7 anyway…?

Yes, yes there is. And it’s amazingly simple.

All you have to do is make a tiny edit to your Windows 7 Registry. While you can do some damage to your system if you edit the wrong parts of your Windows 7 registry, don’t worry. Making these minor adjustments is perfectly safe, and if you follow the instructions you won’t mess anything up.

First, open the Windows Registry Editor. In the start menu, choose “Run” and type in “regedit”. Run the program, and select “Yes,” if the User Access Control dialog box comes up.

In the Windows Registry, navigate to Computer -> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SOFTWARE ->Wow6432Node -> Canon. To install Picture Style Editor, you need to create a new registry keys to trick your computer into thinking that you’ve already installed the software. Right click on the “Canon” key (folder), select “New -> Key.” Call the new key “Picture Style Editor.” Then, right click on the new “ZoomBrowser EX” key, and create another new key, called, “Settings.”

Now, all you need to do is download and install the latest version of Picture Style Editor from the Canon website (currently version 1.9.0). Unfortunately, I can’t directly link to the file, the way the Canon website is set up.

Go to the product page on the Canon website for your camera – as an example, let’s use the Canon t3i product page. Click on the “Drivers & Software” option. Choose your operating system, Windows 7, in the dropdown menu.

Now look down the list of “Software” that’s available. You’re looking for something like “Picture Style Editor 1.9.0 for Windows (PSE190EN.exe).” Download the file, install it, and you’re good to go.

[Note: The reason why I specified Windows 7 throughout this post is that the registry key is slightly different on a Windows Vista or Windows XP system. If you're on an older machine, create the registry keys in Computer -> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SOFTWARE -> Canon. The Wow6432Node key is a new addition in Windows 7.]