Corel Photo House, Legacy software Options

[Bruce Grant]

I have a collection of several hundred *.cps files, taken between 2001 and 2003 with an Agfa CL18 camera which came bundled with Corel Print House and Corel Photo House. The Corel CD ROM is broken, the PC on which the software was installed has suffered terminal HD failure, and the camera has succumbed to salt spray on a round the world sailing trip.

I posted an enquiry to Corel who confirm that I need to find a second hand copy of Corel Photo House to view these files, but that there is no conversion option to another file format. Thought my luck was in when I found a Corel Photo House CD advertised on eBay, but when installed on a Win XP PC it wouldn't open the files. Could be the version, the CD was v.1, and the files may be v.2.

Is there any workaround? If this is a closed proprietary file format there may be no alternative but to launch a world-wide hunt for a later version of the software. The CD I need has a red background with a picture of a girl taking a picture on it.

Any info would be helpful, thanks.

[Grasshopper]

This neatly illustrates why I dislike proprietory file formats........ Always better to save data in more generic formats.

It also annoys me that companies, having got users in these positions, wash their hands of the problem. After all, you can't tell me that Corel don't have a copy of their earlier software.

But beyond tracking a copy down, I'm not sure what else to suggest. Anyone?...........

[markw]

my only suggestion would be to try opening it with as many different image-editing tools as you can find... just on the off chance that someone has incorporated this encoding.

IrfanView would be a good place to start.

followed by Photoshop, PaintShop, any Corel products you can demo, etc etc.

[Stevept2009]

I have a collection of several hundred *.cps files, taken between 2001 and 2003 with an Agfa CL18 camera which came bundled with Corel Print House and Corel Photo House. The Corel CD ROM is broken, the PC on which the software was installed has suffered terminal HD failure, and the camera has succumbed to salt spray on a round the world sailing trip.

I posted an enquiry to Corel who confirm that I need to find a second hand copy of Corel Photo House to view these files, but that there is no conversion option to another file format. Thought my luck was in when I found a Corel Photo House CD advertised on eBay, but when installed on a Win XP PC it wouldn't open the files. Could be the version, the CD was v.1, and the files may be v.2.

Is there any workaround? If this is a closed proprietary file format there may be no alternative but to launch a world-wide hunt for a later version of the software. The CD I need has a red background with a picture of a girl taking a picture on it.

Any info would be helpful, thanks.

Hi Bruce, I have a copy of Corel Photo House and came across your entry. Send me an email with your address and I'll put a copy in the post. I have it installed on an XP laptop so it shoudl work.

No charge..

Regards, Steve.