I was e-mailed recently by asking advice on how to patch Camera Raw on the Mac running OS 10.2.5. The last time I worked with a Mac of any kind was almost 20 years ago, so the advice I could offer was limited. Howard managed it anyway and e-mailed me back saying that the patch worked perfectly. Here is a summary of how he did it.

Howard used a freeware editor called HexEdit from SourceForge.

16 Jan '04 Update: I received an e-mail recently from . Malcolm has the 300D and was clearly more motivated than me to make the plug-in work with his new camera. Rather than try to summarise his method, you can read the full text of his e-mail here. I haven't tested his method, but it does make sense. As always, the advice is to work on a copy of the plug-in. Malcolm doesn't say he was working on a PC or a Mac, but I would imagine it doesn't matter for his method to work.

Update: I received the following additional information about the necessary procedure for hacking the plug-in under OS X. They were sent to me by Virgil Mirano, but the originator was Lee Varis. Rather than further expose my ignorance of Mac operating systems, I'll quote Lee's instructions in full and leave it to you to work it out. Thanks to both Lee and Virgil.

To edit the actual plug-in you have to first "show" the contents of the "package". To edit anything in OS X you have to first open the package. This is a common procedure in OS X and that's probably why it isn't mentioned in the steps. (Damn right, who knew? ) All applications, of just about every kind, are actually "packages" that contain other files in OS X. Locate the Camera Raw plug-in and and hold for a contextual menu; select "Show Package Contents" from this menu. Open the "Contents" folder and you will now see the other files.

At this point you can follow the directions on the web page. Locate the "MacOS" folder inside the "Contents" folder - a "Camera Raw" plug-in file will be inside this. Use HexEdit to change the text string D60 to 10D in this file. Then locate the "MacOSClassic" folder and Hex Edit the Camera Raw plug-in you find there! That's it. When you close the "Contents" window, you're done and back where you started.

These are the original instructions that need implementation in the light of the additional information from Lee and Virgil:

Copy and rename the plug-in file

Make sure Photoshop is not running.  Then copy and rename the original file Camera Raw plug-in file  (Command D), located at:

/Applications/Adobe Photoshop 7/Plug-Ins/Adobe Photoshop Only/File Formats/Camera Raw