What is a CR3 File Type?
The CR3 format is based on the ISO base media file format and includes custom tags and the crx codec that supports lossless RAW and C-RAW compressions. It is saved with compression C-RAW, image is d' about 40% smaller in size with minimal differences in image quality.
With the Digic 8 processor, the Canon EOS M50 can capture images in the CR3 format. Both .CRW and CR2 formats were used in previous versions of Canon. The CRW is based on the Camera Image File Format (CIFF) and the CR2 is based on the TIFF specification.
You can open CR3 files in Adobe Lightroom (Version 2.0 and later), Adobe Lightroom for iPad (Version 5.1 and later) and Adobe Lightroom Classic (Version 8.0 and later) with the Adobe Camera Raw plugin (Version 11.0 and later) installed. You can also open CR3 files in Canon Digital Photo Professional and convert them into other formats or Canon Digital Photo Professional Express on an iPad and convert them into .JPG files.
With the release of MacOS Catalina (10.15) and iOS 13, support for CR3 images at the-system level was introduced. There are, however, models of Canon cameras that create CR3 images that are not supported by the d'system; operation macOS or iOS.