Where does ACR get it's EXIF information?

I'm a little confused on how ACR deals with EXIF information. I'm evaluating iView MediaPro to use as my photo organization software, and it can read the EXIF data from my RAW image's associated THM file (I'm using a Canon D60). Using a program called "Image Info", I looked at both the CRW file (the RAW image file) and THM file and as advertised, the CRW file contained no data and the THM file contained all the EXIF data for the image.

Fast forward to ACR. I wanted to see where it pulled the exposure information from, so I made two folders, one with just the CRW file in it, and one with both the CRW and THM file. Individually, I converted each to a TIFF file through ACR.

To my surprise, both converted files had the same exposure information in them.

My question is, where is ACR getting its exposure data from if there is no THM file available to look at? Does ACR even use the THM file? I'm puzzled (but in a good way, since the data is there :) )

Thanks,

Jeff SWayze

The EXIF information is coming from the CRW files. The THM is only used to speed the building of thumbnails for the Photoshop file browser, and is otherwise ignored.

If you delete the THM files, the file broswer will take longer to build the thumbnails, but otherwise there will be no problems.