Canon DPP vs Adobe LR4 or Camera RAw

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Hi, DPP and ACR have their own ways of rendering an image from the raw file. In both of these you can basically apply any amount of sharpness and saturation you prefer (and of course lots of other stuff). So a short answer to your question would be no, images rendered by LR will not be less saturated or less sharp (unless you want them to be).

I used DPP only for a couple of years, but after hearing all the good words about Lightroom 3 (at the time) I tried it. In the beginning I was doubtful - I had difficulties achieving exactly the same result as I did with basically no effort in DPP. But after some practice I got results that were better than what I could achieve with DPP, and since then I’m stuck with Lightroom.

A short summary of my main experiences of DPP vs. LR (ACR):

- Overall, Lightroom can do a lot more than DPP. (I’m only referring to the raw conversion - not all the other bonus features of LR.)

- By default LR/ACR applies a really flat/boring development recipe to all images - unlike DPP it can’t read the settings you used in camera. But you can easily create your own set of basic development recipes, or presets that they are called in LR, and apply whatever you like by default.

- Then, of course, there are a bunch of bonus features in Lightroom. The library module for organization of your entire photo collection is wonderful, but I rarely use the other modules.

- Even though I strongly prefer ACR/LR over DPP, there are still some things that I find DPP does better. For example I find it easier to do lens corrections in DPP. (I suppose Canon has better input to the software regarding distortion, vignetting, CA etc. than Adobe has been able to reverse engineer.) But even if DPP has the edge, I still believe the lens corrections in Ligtroom works well most of the time.

- Another advantage of DPP could be the rapidness - my computer isn’t brand new, but no older than a couple of years. All software installed on it runs really smoothly…except Lightroom 4. It’s really demanding. It’s still fine to work with, but it sometimes gets close to the patience limit. This is partially why I still use EOS Utility and DPP for downloading from camera and “rubbish removal” before I import photos into LR.

I suggest you try the free evaluation version of Lightroom. Give it some time and get it if you like it.