ZoomBrowser EX

ZoomBrowser EX is the image organiser that shipped with Canon cameras before the current generation of software took over. It downloads photos from the camera into folders named by shooting date, shows them as thumbnails you can zoom in and out of with a slider, and offers enough editing to crop, fix red eye, straighten a horizon and adjust colour before printing or emailing. It also reaches back into the camera, changing settings and firing the shutter from the computer.

The reason to want it now is a Canon camera that came with it and a workflow built around it. Plenty of people kept an older PowerShot or EOS body, and the successor software dropped features they relied on.

ZoomBrowser EX still does what it did, provided the camera is one it recognises, and that compatibility is the first thing to check.

Three ways to look at a folder

The ZoomBrowser EX browser has three modes, and switching between them is how most navigation happens. Zoom mode shows folders and subfolders as nested tiles with their images inside, so a whole year’s structure fits on one screen and a click dives into a month. Scroll mode is the conventional thumbnail grid with a size slider. Preview mode puts one image large with a filmstrip beneath it for stepping through a shoot.

Star ratings and My Category tags sort the keepers from the rest, and a filter shows only images at a given rating or in a chosen category. Search covers date and rating as well as comments and keywords.

It stores its data alongside the images rather than in a separate database, which is why folders moved elsewhere still open with their ratings intact.

CameraWindow and remote shooting

Connect the camera and CameraWindow opens, listing what is on the card and offering to download new images only, or a selection, into date folders. The same window changes camera settings such as the owner name and start-up image, and on supported bodies it triggers the shutter from the computer, with the live view on screen for models that provide one.

Support for that direct connection depends on the camera and the system release, and a newer body will simply not appear. When the camera is not recognised, copying the card through a reader still works for browsing and editing, only the camera control is lost, and a card that has been formatted by mistake is a job for a photo recovery tool before anything here.

Editing photos, trimming movies, printing

The ZoomBrowser EX editor handles the everyday corrections. Red eye removal and auto adjustment, colour, brightness and sharpness, trimming, inserting text and the shooting date, and a level correction for tilted horizons. Edits save as a new file by default, so the original survives. RAW files from Canon bodies open through the companion RAW converter rather than here, and anyone who wants proper tone control should keep a dedicated editor beside it.

Short movies from the camera can be trimmed and joined, with titles and transitions, which suits the clips a compact camera produces and nothing longer. Print layouts cover single images, index sheets and multiple images on a page with captions, and an export step resizes images for email or the web.

For a wider library that mixes cameras and formats, an image viewer that reads several hundred formats is the more general tool.

The successor and what changed

The replacement software absorbed the browsing and editing but dropped some of what people liked, including the zoom tile view, and it needs an online component that older machines could not install. Anyone on a machine where the newer software will not run, or who simply preferred the tile view, keeps this one.

It is not updated, and camera support stops where it stopped. Photos from any source still open, but the camera-specific parts are frozen at the models it already knew.

For Canon owners with current cameras, the current software or a general photo manager is the sensible choice. This is for the older kit.

Conclusion

ZoomBrowser EX suits owners of older Canon cameras who want the download-and-print routine they already know, on a machine that may not be new either. The zoom tile view remains a pleasant way to move through years of photos, and the tethered shooting is a bonus on bodies that support it.

It is a museum piece for anyone with a current camera. Recognition stops at older models, nothing is updated, and the editing has been outgrown. Keep it for the old kit and the tile view, and let a modern tool handle everything newer.