Canon's Digital Photo Professional - Do you like it?

[bernardwest]

Hi all. I recently attended a friend's wedding where I casually shot a few

pics, just so I could pretend for a day that I was a wedding photographer.

Anyway, that was fun, but I also had a bit of fun after the shoot comparing

DPP, RawShooter Essentials (RSE), and Lightroom on one particular photo. I see

quite a lot of favourable comments about DPP, but I've never really got good

results out of it. I'd love to get peoples opinions on why they think it is so

good. My understanding of it is that you only get limited 16-bit 'blunt'

controls like brightness, contrast, and exposure, but when you want to do

adjustments to more specific parts of the curve, you must use the RGB tab which

works in only 8- bits. RSE (now defunct I suppose) and Lightroom work in 16-

bits to my knowledge.

 

I have attached a section of a photo which I shot off the cuff very quickly

without any consideration to exposure compensation or bracketing or whatever

(basically this is my excuse for taking a bad photo). The sand is blown out,

and I set about in DPP, RSE and lightroom to see what I could bring back. The

attached image is top: JPG out of camera; below that: DPP; below that: RSE; and

finally Lightroom at the bottom. Clearly Lightroom is the winner, but most

dissapointing is that DPP didn't seem to recover any highlights at all. Why is

it that Canon's own RAW software can't use the full Dynamic range captured in

the image? By the way it was shot on a 5D.

 

I guess one answer I might get will be that I should have got it right in the

camera first. This is a valid point, and I have made good use of DPP on better

exposed photos before. But I figure one of the advantages of RAW is that it

gives you the maximum latitude possible when taking a photo. Canon's DPP

doesn't seem to take advantage of this latitude. I would love to hear some

opinions. cheers, Bernie.

[phoneguy]

I've never been a fan of DPP, but I've always used Adobe products, so I didn't have much

incentive to fully delve into the other variations out there. To many different workflows to

master. Lightroom is by far, my favorite.

 

From my perspective, Canon is not in the Image manipulation software business, so they

provide the bare bones programs, and don't fine tune them, as it's not their source of

income. They make their money from camera's, and other big ticket items, not software. This

is just my take on it...YMMV.

[Michael Eckstein]

I have tried many raw converters and now do all my conversions using DPP. I find it gives results with more natural color and better detail in the final prints than any of the other programs I have used.

 

Of course the real secret with recovering highlights is not to lose them in the first place. I find highlight recovery not to be an important asset in raw conversion. The right place for this correction is when the image is taken.

[pmags]

I found the DPP workflow and functions a bit confusing until I spent an hour or so going through the tutorials at the Canon learning center. See:

 

http://www.usa.canon.com/content/dpp2/index.html

 

I suppose I could have read the manual, but who wants to do that?! ;-)

 

Based on the tutorials and some additional playing around I'm quite pleased with the results I'm getting. The other program I'm trying to get the hang of is Capture One LE. So far I don't find the interface as pleasant to use as that of DPP.

 

 

Cheers,

Paul

[tim_dodd]

DPP was my editor of choice until I came across Lightroom and now I use that almost exclusively. My demands are fairly modest at the moment since I am still trying to improve my photographic skills and not my graphic design skills. I want tools to crop/straighten, adjust white balance, tweak levels and curves and clone out dust spots.

 

I have no interest, at the moment, in applying creative effects or spending hours adding layers and masking out bits and pieces of a photograph. I have tried Photoshop CS2 with Bridge and ACR a few times but really find Photoshop too much of a learning curve to spend the time. Lightroom gives me all i need and is quick and easy to use, with non-destructive editing of raw and jpeg files. By comparison Photoshop just seems like a lot of hard work.

[tim_dodd]

Ooops, sorry, I went a bit off topic (DPP). DPP did most of what I want/need and it is quite nice to be able to use it to play with in-camera settings like picture styles AFTER you've taken the photo. The weak points for me were the lack of a straightening feature and, having now used Lightroom, the lack of highlight recovery. At the price though, you really can't grumble. There is a new 3.01 version out to support Vista, and with a new noise handling tab, so the product is still being developed.

[zackojones]

I have been using DPP and do like it. I also have a 30 day trial of lightroom and am learning it as well. I think I will probably switch to lightroom. One thing that is swaying my decision a good bit is the number of books written for lightroom VS the number of books written for DPP. I just wish I had bought lightroom when it was available for $199 :(.

[bernardwest]

Michael, what then do you consider the important assets of RAW conversion? I would have thought the main advantages of RAW over say 16-bit tiff would be, 1. Ability to correct white balance; and 2. Ability to utilise the full dynamic range of the captured image. If anything, point 1 is the thing best got right in camera. So why do you use RAW at all? For me, point 2 is the one thing that can't be taken care of 'in-camera'. Using good RAW software, such as lightroom, you can get access to this extra dynamic range. Why not take advantage of this?