Any thoughts on DDP comparision to other programs

[andnowimbroke]

To be honest, I never even installed the program to see what it was capable of. I think even Bryan used it to convert his raw files over but can't promise that as my memory is a year older than it was last week. I was reading sooo much stuff at the time when I first started (way back in 2009) I lost track. I got the general idea from people more brilliant than I in other forums, that Canon made cameras and just offered up the DDP crap as a freebee, and Adobe Camera Raw (among others) were the programs of choice as their niche was software. It made sense at the time. After several recent posts from others talking about DDP (automatic adjustments to specific lens, etc.), it's starting to sound like it does more than what I originally gave it credit for especially considering what little I do with pictures. I'm still using Lightroom Beta and really don't use the catalog feature (which is pretty much the whole reason people use Lightroom2). I'm still in the early stages of picture-taking and would like not to drag a picture through three or four programs I'm unfamiliar with to reach the final result. My question is, how does DDP stack up with other programs in terms of basic adjustments (cropping, borders, signatures stamps, plug-insif needed,noise removal,and possible cloning or spot removal)?

[DavidEccleston]

(cropping, borders, signatures stamps, plug-insif needed,noise removal,and possible cloning or spot removal)

Yes, No, No, No, Yes, and Yes.[]


With DPP you work in your choice of 5 different color spaces. You can adjust brightness, contrast/highlight/shadow, black level, white level, white balance, color tone, saturation, and sharpess, and picture style. You can apply a tone curve, and change hue, perform noise reduction, lens aberration correction (peripheral illumination, distortion, chromatic aberration). You can crop, rotate, and clone via tools in the menus, and you can resize during a save.


It works quite well for everything it does. If you need a border or a signature stamp though, you'll still need another tool.

[andnowimbroke]

If you need a border or a signature stamp though, you'll still need another tool

It's not a biggy, but would have been nice. How does the noise fix'in compare to specialized programs? It would make sense that Canon knows what their noise looks like and should be decent, but does it get real muddy and lose detail. I peaked at noise ninja (and imagenomic(?) later on)after seeing a banner on Rob G.'s website.

[dmckinny]

First a caveat, I am not a pro, or even an experiences amatuer.


My short answer is give DPP a try, read Brian's workflow article on this site, and be patient. What it does with your shots is actually pretty good.


I got my first SLR (30d) and PSE6 about two years ago and have been using that combination the whole time. Recently I moved everything over to a new computer with Window 7 and had some issues with PSE6 (compatibility, stability etc.) Since I have primarily been shooting my daughter and her soccer team, and the season was coming to a close I needed to process almost all my spring shots. I decided to take the opportunity to try DPP, roughly following Brian's workflow. This worked for me since I was just doing basic stuff on a global basis. What I am finding is that while the controls in DPP are a little harder to figure out, I have picked it up pretty quickly. I also found out that I am much happier working in DPP with large (for me) picture sets from a game or tournament. I have never figured out a reasonable way to process multiple shots in PSE6, at least not on that I like.


What I am doing now is use Canon tools to load the pictures on the computer. Then use DPP to process the RAW files and finally load the processed files into PSE6 to take advantage of the cataloging.


Ihave severalbooks by Michael Freeman, and in one of them he did a chapter on various RAW processing programs, and how they have very different outputs with the same inputs. It was rather enlightening. It appeard that Adobe Camera RAW and DPP were very close in what they did. We have choices, however the poor Nikon folks (like my father-in-law), have a pretty crappy program from Nikon!

[andnowimbroke]

I was just thinking about this the other day. I was supposed to take some classes at a college this summer, but doesn't seem like it is going to work out. With the student discount, I was going to get a good all-in-one program to play with. After I found out I wasn't going, I saw PSE8 on sale for $50 and almost bought it as my thirty days of CS4 are finished. I guess I just need to dig the disk out of DDP and do like you said. I just didn't want to load up any more junk on this ancient machine that I have and resign myself to more than likelyneeding more than one program to do what I want.


Thanks for the input

[mikehillman89]

Sorry for the off-topic-ness of this, but I couldn't get DDP to work with my friends 7D. It kept giving me an error and would just quit itself... I just use photoshop cs5 for now.

[andnowimbroke]

Sorry for the off-topic-ness of this

No bothers mikehillman. I rarely stay on topic anyway Just curious, was it the DDP version that came with the 7D, and did you have any problems when installing the software?

[mikehillman89]

it was version 20.4 that came with my dads 50D. But he got his 50D way after my friend got his 7D so the version should be newer than the 7D version that would have come with it. And no, 0 problems on install, just when trying to read and run the program

[andnowimbroke]

The 50D was prolly just sittin' on a shelf and might not have had the lastest and greatest. I did some diggin' and think the 7D had Canon EOS Digital Solution Disk(Version 21.0) and Digital Photo Professional (Version 3.7.0). I'm not sure what mine had. I was under the assumption that anything you had to pay extra for was better than something you got for free. I know now just to try it first. CS5 though prolly wins..at least it better for an extra grand[]

[neuroanatomist]

It doesn't matter which disc the camera came with. You can go to the Canon software download page and get the latest versions of DPP and the other software. Even selecting an old model like the 10D brings up the latest version of DPP (once you select your OS from the pop-up menu).