Digital Photo Professional vs. Photoshop CS4

I shoot a lot a varied events from kids sports to weddings. I usually shoot important events, especially if I'm being paid, in camera RAW and process through DPP.


I've never become an expert inDPP; I just fix white balance and maybe play a bit with brightness and then convert to jpg and move on to Photoshop.


I'm wondering if there there are otheradjustments that you have found superior in DPP. So if your bored, I'd be interested in your opinions on workflow through DPP andPS4.


Thanks in advance.

I use DPP. I always adjust the White Balance, sometimes I take a picture of a grey card, and use that with the dropper. I also bump up Sharpness to 7 (in the RAW tab). You can also corrrect for noise, barrel distortion, and lens aberration in the NR/Lens tab. If you use Canon lenses, especially newer ones, the profiles will be loaded to adjust for the barrel distortion, and lens aberration. When I shoot at high ISO, I max out both noise reductions, then really push the sharpness. Maybe bump up saturation a notch in bright, midday conditions. Otherwise, I'm not too interested in going much further than that. Things can start to look overdone.

I don't have photoshop anymore...


Nothing against it, but for basics, DPP works fine for me.


I typicaly go 100% with something in focus, adjust sharpness in RAW, apply noise filtering, adjust sharpness again in RAW, set white balance in raw, maybe adjust white and black, then adjust brightness/contrast and play with the tone curves, maybe tweak saturation one way or another.


Might use the trimming or stamp tool.

I don't understand the RAW histogram/curve. Do you adjust that, or the JPEG histogram/curve?

if the image doesn't use anywhere near the dynamic range offered by the raw capture, I'll adjust the RAW high and low point to put the top and bottom closer to what the image actually requires, so that the raw output doesn't waste a bunch of information potential. This is merely setting black and white points. In effect, you are increasingthe contrast of the RAW file unfurling to make use of the dynamic range available for the next step. However, I don't always do it. I also double check the RGB histogram to makesure I'm not blowing anything out, because if you blow it out before you've even adjusted anything in RGB, then it's gone.


I don't actually do much adjustment of the curves themselves in RAW, as it doesn't give you much control, but rather mostly adjust THE curve.


In the RGB tab, you can make very specific adjustments in how the image comes out of 'black' towards 'white', all colors at a time, or individually, making the adjustments that best address what you want to do.

If there is a considerable amount of cropping necessary for an image, I find I get better results cropping close to the final intent in DPP rather than Photoshop, thus doing that upsampling from the raw rather than from a converted TIFF or JPEG.


For my tastes, the human skin colors I get at DPP's "Faithful" setting is perfect, and it can't really be duplicated in Photoshop. DPP has some algorithm that varies the color balance (mostly in the magenta value) non-proportionately to the color temperature set by the overall color balance. In other words, for instance, the "Faithful" setting varies the color balance differently if the scene color temperature is 3800K compared to what it does if the scene color temperature is 5600K. But the results are always just what I like.


I've also found that converting an image to BW is better done in DPP. The DPP "Monotone" conversion includes contrast,color-to-tone adjustments,and sharpening values that are very good. It's possible to set up Photoshop to duplicate them, but that will take a bit of experimentation--out of the box, though, DPP produces a better image.

I find myself using Photoshop less and less now that I'm getting more comfortable with DPP. Granted, I only have PS Elements 5.0, which I'm sure doesn't have nearly the functionality of CS4. But I'm really liking what I get out of DPP a lot. I've been using 5.0 for 3 years now, and a lot of it still doesn't make any sense to me. It's so unintuitive, and has all this jargon that doesn't make any sense. I know a lot of people are able to do some pretty amazing things with PS, but I just don't get it!

I just downloaded what I think is the most recent form of DPP a few days ago. Is it generally considered better for making adjustments to RAW files than photoshop? (I only have Ps CS).


DPP seems really confusing. Do I just need to work with DPP to get comfortable with it?


Also I'm a bit confused as to the 'transfer to photoshop' option. It transfers as a TIF and it seems likeyou lose alot of photoshop's editing power if you edit an importedTIF file oposed to an originalPSD file.

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Originally Posted by Rodger

I just downloaded what I think is the most recent form of DPP a few days ago. Is it generally considered better for making adjustments to RAW files than photoshop? (I only have Ps CS).

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Most people who have used DPP consider it the very best converter to get the best Canon files have to offer in terms of color purity. However, a lot of people prefer the workflow of ACR (which is the converter in Photoshop) or Lightroom.


The current version of DPP includes a database of Canon lens characteristics so it can automatically apply corrections for lens faults and aberrations--no other converter can do that.


Much depends on how many files you generally have to convert in a session and whether you have to do much significant editing of individual images. People who have hundreds of files to convert and won't do much editing on them (like wedding photographers) prefer the speed of Lightroom. But if you only have a hundred or fewer files, then DPP works as well.


The thing to remember is that DPP is a raw converter. It's not an editor and doesn't try to be. It's purpose is to convert Canon cr2 files into the best possible image files, nothing more, nothing less.


A warning: If you're using an older version of Photoshop, you may need to upgrade to use its ACR to convert the raw files from later Canon cameras. Adobe does not provide updates for cameras introduced after that version of Photoshop has been superceded.

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DPP seems really confusing. Do I just need to work with DPP to get comfortable with it?

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Well, you do need to print out the manual and sit down with it to get comfortable. Here is an online tutorial that really gets you going well: http://www.usa.canon.com/dlc/controller?act=GetArticleAct&articleID=1228&am p;fromTips=1

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Also I'm a bit confused as to the 'transfer to photoshop' option. It transfers as a TIF and it seems likeyou lose alot of photoshop's editing power if you edit an importedTIF file oposed to an originalPSD file.
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The "transfer to Photoshop" option is primarily if you're only converting a single image. It's true that Photoshop does not handle TIFF files as efficiently as it handles PSD files.


DPP has a batch convert function. Generally I make the certain corrections in the images that are best done at the raw stage (exposure correction, color balance, major cropping) and then convert the entire session as a batch to 16-bit TIFF image files. Those go into a TIFF folder where I'll pull them into Photoshop for editing.





I'll save them as PSD files early in that process and work with them as PSD files until I'm ready to print. Then I convert them to JPEG to send them to my lab or print them on my printer.

I used DPP for about nine months. I recently installed Lightroom, I'm never looking back...


Lightroom is superior to DPP in about every way I can think of. The only reason I can think of to use DPP over Lightroom is that DPP is free (well, free with the camera).

Why do you convert them to jpeg for printing? Can't you print them straight from the CR2 file format? Is the final image better coming from a jpeg or does it really matter? Just curious!

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Originally Posted by gymken

Why do you convert them to jpeg for printing? Can't you print them straight from the CR2 file format? Is the final image better coming from a jpeg or does it really matter? Just curious!
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A raw file can't actually be printed. It's not an image file, it's a set of instructions to create an image file. For instance, what you see in DPP or any other raw converter is actually a TIFF or JPEG image created on the spot just for the monitor display. So you can't print the raw file, you have to convert it to an actual image file first.

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Originally Posted by RDKirk

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Originally Posted by gymken

Why do you convert them to jpeg for printing? Can't you print them straight from the CR2 file format? Is the final image better coming from a jpeg or does it really matter? Just curious!

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A raw file can't actually be printed. It's not an image file, it's a set of instructions to create an image file. For instance, what you see in DPP or any other raw converter is actually a TIFF or JPEG image created on the spot just for the monitor display. So you can't print the raw file, you have to convert it to an actual image file first.

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The image that is imbed in the RAW is based on a TIF, but it does need to rendered to be printed. Think of the RAW as TIF in PS with elaborate adjustment layers over the background layer.

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Originally Posted by RDKirk

I'll save them as PSD files early in that process and work with them as PSD files until I'm ready to print. Then I convert them to JPEG to send them to my lab or print them on my printer.

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I watched the tutorial and it was veryy helpful. But the reason I quoted the above is that when I (using photoshop cs) open a 16-bit TIFF file converted from a RAW file using DPP, JPEG is not in the 'save as' menu. Even if I save the TIFF file as a PSD file and then go to save as again, the JPEG option is eluding me


I use DPP for selecting keepers out of what I shoot (not many), and I've been using it as a RAW editor and skipping photoshop all together. I like DPP's ability to edit mass numbers of images quickly (withrecipesand such), but I miss the creativity of photoshop. Is photoshop better for editing while DPP is just quicker and gets the job done? For instance, is DPP's sharpening as good as the methods described by Scott Kelby in the "Photoshop CS #" books?

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Originally Posted by Rodger

when I open a 16-bit TIFF, JPEG is not in the 'save as' menu.

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Try Image-&gt;Mode-&gt;8-bits per channel.

I print directly from the raw file.


I have photoshop CS4, I open my raw files in camera raw, I adjust them if needed, and from camera raw I open them in photoshop. I print them from photoshop without saving them in JPEG or Tiff.

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I print directly from the raw file.


I have photoshop CS4, I open my raw files in camera raw, I adjust them if needed, and from camera raw I open them in photoshop. I print them from photoshop without saving them in JPEG or Tiff.

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If you've moved the image from ACR to Photoshop, you're no longer working with the raw file. ACR renders it to a TIFF behind the scenes, and that's what you're working with and then printing from in Photoshop

Thank you for the explaination

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Back to the main topic, I use PS CS2 only for getting rid of dust and fixing up panoramics. I find the stamp tool on DPP to be weak, but every picture I post process goes through DPP first.

Also worth noting is the latest version of DPP has a much more powerful noise reduction than previous versions. Just go to a newer Canon model support page to get it. For example, on the version that came with my Xti, full noise reduction (20) is equivalent to about "5" on the newer version. Just one notch in either direction makes a big difference. I've been very happy using this program.