Post processing of shots taken with EOS R6 M2

Hello - after getting my EOS R6 M2 and taking some test shots - portraits, action, landscape, etc. I am a bit torn up. Let me explain please.

I find Canon's own free offering - DPP and its latest version to be pretty good. It has a decent set of post processing tools and has in-built support for some Canon specific stuff like HDR PQ, Dual Pixel and what not.

Frankly - after testing those "exotic" parameters or even just plain vanilla RAW captures I am okay with the outputs DPP is generating.

Question 1: Am I am exception in assuming DPP is good enough?

Area where I found DPP is a bit lacking is noise and sharpening especially in general, low light or specific areas only of a photo. Thus, its here I am a bit torn up. On one hand, I can go for Capture One or Lightroom and use that only OR I can just get some specialized tools which are especially good for noise / sharpening like Topaz AI products. What I don't want is to opt for Lightroom / Capture One only to realize I still need Topaz AI (or similar). LOL. That's a double whammy in terms of $$.

Question 2: Is my thought process skewed? i.e. DPP is good enough and don't need anything else OR just get LR / Capture One and call it a day?

My objectives: I am not doing photography to generate income. So I don't need 200% tone match, etc. All I am looking for is decent exposure, good to excellent sharpness and de-noise....

I have not tried processing RAW files from my R6II with DPP.  Being a long time Capture One user since the Digital Rebel (aka 300D) days, I was pleased with the speed and quality from C1 Pro.  I had to upgrade to V23 to have the R6II support.

I would second the notion of using DPP until DXO has support for the R6II, which shouldnt be long now.

It handles colors a bit better on my R6, great lens corrections, and class leading noise reduction (which is my primary reason for using DXO).

Canon Colors are so nice and the wb works so good most of the time that the jpg out of the camera are just great and you’ll fight to get as nice results in 3rd party software most of the time unless you are after a special/artistic look… or for difficult landscapes/low light situations etc.

bmninada wrote:

Frankly - after testing those "exotic" parameters or even just plain vanilla RAW captures I am okay with the outputs DPP is generating.

Question 1: Am I am exception in assuming DPP is good enough?

I guess many people use it as an interim step (e.g. to get 'proper' Canon colours and export to tiff for further processing). Some people may stop there and just use DPP.

Area where I found DPP is a bit lacking is noise and sharpening especially in general, low light or specific areas only of a photo. Thus, its here I am a bit torn up. On one hand, I can go for Capture One or Lightroom and use that only OR I can just get some specialized tools which are especially good for noise / sharpening like Topaz AI products. What I don't want is to opt for Lightroom / Capture One only to realize I still need Topaz AI (or similar). LOL. That's a double whammy in terms of $$.

Question 2: Is my thought process skewed? i.e. DPP is good enough and don't need anything else OR just get LR / Capture One and call it a day?

Good enough for what genre/style of photography?

My objectives: I am not doing photography to generate income. So I don't need 200% tone match, etc. All I am looking for is decent exposure, good to excellent sharpness and de-noise....

Post a couple of examples of your best shots, that way it'd be easier to identify the level of postprocessing you may actually need.

On the other hand, if you're happy with what DPP provides, why pay more for 3rd party software?

bmninada wrote:

Hello - after getting my EOS R6 M2 and taking some test shots - portraits, action, landscape, etc. I am a bit torn up. Let me explain please.

I find Canon's own free offering - DPP and its latest version to be pretty good. It has a decent set of post processing tools and has in-built support for some Canon specific stuff like HDR PQ, Dual Pixel and what not.

Frankly - after testing those "exotic" parameters or even just plain vanilla RAW captures I am okay with the outputs DPP is generating.

Question 1: Am I am exception in assuming DPP is good enough?

Area where I found DPP is a bit lacking is noise and sharpening especially in general, low light or specific areas only of a photo. Thus, its here I am a bit torn up. On one hand, I can go for Capture One or Lightroom and use that only OR I can just get some specialized tools which are especially good for noise / sharpening like Topaz AI products. What I don't want is to opt for Lightroom / Capture One only to realize I still need Topaz AI (or similar). LOL. That's a double whammy in terms of $$.

Question 2: Is my thought process skewed? i.e. DPP is good enough and don't need anything else OR just get LR / Capture One and call it a day?

My objectives: I am not doing photography to generate income. So I don't need 200% tone match, etc. All I am looking for is decent exposure, good to excellent sharpness and de-noise....

DPP4 is good enough in my book. I gave DXO and LR a whirl against RAWs out there from the R6 II. DPP4 is about the same as DXO presently, and LR needs to fix the WB calibration. So for now? You’re not nuts.

Now sending the RAWs to DPP4, then to TIFFs, then to LR? That’s best, but is a workflow. Takes some time, but gives best results.

SurettePhotography wrote:

I've been using DxO Photo Lab forever, and love it. However it currently doesn't support the Canon R6 Mark II. This support is coming in January. Canon DPP is a very clunky stop gap in my estimations and use. I've downloaded Capture One trial to tide me over until the support is available in DxO Photo Lab.

I find anything Adobe way over priced for my needs, and there are much better and cheaper options out there. DPP is one of them, no frills RAW processing.

I wonder how the current Adobe Photography Plan which costs the price of literally two coffees monthly can seem overpriced to someone who is able to spend thousands of dollars for the photo gear .

The plan includes allways the most up-to-date versions of fully featured unlimited Lightroom and Photoshop (including Camera Raw) as well as Lightroom for mobiles and tablets.

To me the price/performance ratio is insanely favourable.

I'm looking forward to upgrading to Photo Lab 6 when the R6 Mark II support is available.

I took a whirl. LR -> trial. Capture One -> trial.

My monitor's pretty good calibrated using Spyder, etc. BENQ professional with 100% Adobe RGB, etc.

Anyways what I found is DPP JPEGs are seriously good comparing to LR and Capture One. I did what I thought is best in DPP. Then did that using LR and finally with Capture One.

As 1 post suggested - next I tried the RAW in DPP and using which applied the lens corrections, exported as TIFF and then tried using LR and Capture One. Final images again as JPEGs. Its here I found JPEGs generated by Capture One to be slightly better but its nothing to write home about.

The thing that concerns me in de-noise and sharpening since I have a bunch of stuff in low light. No matter what I did LR - did best, then DPP and finally Capture One. Surprisingly, Capture One was worst when it came to de-noise and sharpening.

1 big surprise though: "Astro denoise" in darktable was excellent. Better than LR and denoise (profiled) in darktable was really good. So, this time around I did everything in DPP -> stored as TIFF and then applied denoise + sharpening using darktable. Boom: perfect!

Finally I had some photos shot using RAW Dual Pixel and some using HDR PQ. Those photos DPP came out miles ahead than Capture One or LR. I don't remember which one but one of them failed to load too!

The only reason I feel DPP is bad is because its sloooowwwwww. LOL.

bmninada wrote:

Hello - after getting my EOS R6 M2 and taking some test shots - portraits, action, landscape, etc. I am a bit torn up. Let me explain please.

I find Canon's own free offering - DPP and its latest version to be pretty good. It has a decent set of post processing tools and has in-built support for some Canon specific stuff like HDR PQ, Dual Pixel and what not.

Frankly - after testing those "exotic" parameters or even just plain vanilla RAW captures I am okay with the outputs DPP is generating.

This is where you can start from. If the output, worklflow and functions of DPP are okay for you, then you have your questions answered .

Question 1: Am I am exception in assuming DPP is good enough?

Good enough for what? What means enough? I would approach it the way that if the final output format quality is fine for me, then it is good enough. If not, then I would look elsewhere.

Area where I found DPP is a bit lacking is noise and sharpening especially in general, low light or specific areas only of a photo. Thus, its here I am a bit torn up. On one hand, I can go for Capture One or Lightroom and use that only OR I can just get some specialized tools which are especially good for noise / sharpening like Topaz AI products. What I don't want is to opt for Lightroom / Capture One only to realize I still need Topaz AI (or similar). LOL. That's a double whammy in terms of $$.

And also from the workflow ease point of view.

Regarding the noise and sharpness, with the R6II you can forget any noise issues up to ISO6400 if your common output are A4 or smaller prints or 2.7k 32'' or smaller monitor.

Just don't fall prey to a wrong conviction that ISO12800 image has to have zero noise.

Question 2: Is my thought process skewed? i.e. DPP is good enough and don't need anything else OR just get LR / Capture One and call it a day?

My objectives: I am not doing photography to generate income. So I don't need 200% tone match, etc. All I am looking for is decent exposure, good to excellent sharpness and de-noise....

As above, if the workflow, functions and output quality of DPP suits you, then it is very fine. You can always take a look on videos describing assets of other SWs and see if anything from what they offer would be handy to your usage. You may or may not find them more useful. Also you will see if you prefer one SW to do it all or if you will set up your workflow on multiple SW. I personaly find more SW to process my photos as very unconvenient, especially in terms of batch processing and automated preset actions.

SurettePhotography wrote:

Canon_Guy wrote:

SurettePhotography wrote:

I've been using DxO Photo Lab forever, and love it. However it currently doesn't support the Canon R6 Mark II. This support is coming in January. Canon DPP is a very clunky stop gap in my estimations and use. I've downloaded Capture One trial to tide me over until the support is available in DxO Photo Lab.

I find anything Adobe way over priced for my needs, and there are much better and cheaper options out there. DPP is one of them, no frills RAW processing.

I wonder how the current Adobe Photography Plan which costs the price of literally two coffees monthly can seem overpriced to someone who is able to spend thousands of dollars for the photo gear .

The plan includes allways the most up-to-date versions of fully featured unlimited Lightroom and Photoshop (including Camera Raw) as well as Lightroom for mobiles and tablets.

To me the price/performance ratio is insanely favourable.

I'm looking forward to upgrading to Photo Lab 6 when the R6 Mark II support is available.

Adobe will keep costing you each and every month you use it, hardly two cups of coffee. Lightroom is $12.99 CAD per month ($155.88 per year), PhotoShop and Lightroom ($25.99 CAD per month or $311.88 per year)

DxO upgrade is $99 and I can use it on two of my Mac's. DxO you don't have to upgrade, but Adobe will keep charging you each and every month. That's a lot of coffee.

DxO is a much better investment, in my opinion, for my workflow. Your milage will vary.

This is fake news.

https://www.adobe.com/ca/products/photoshop-lightroom-classic.html

Photography (20GB)

CAD $12.99/mo

Lightroom for desktop and mobile, Lightroom Classic, and Photoshop on desktop and iPad.

Can also be used on two devices. The price you describe contains additional cloud storage.

SurettePhotography wrote:

Adobe will keep costing you each and every month you use it, hardly two cups of coffee. Lightroom is $12.99 CAD per month ($155.88 per year), PhotoShop and Lightroom ($25.99 CAD per month or $311.88 per year)

Photoshop is also included in the $12.99 CAD ($9.99 USD) Photography plan. The difference is the $25.99 CAD plan includes a TB of online storage as opposed to 20GB in the cheaper plan.

And if you watch for sales, you can get the cheaper plan for a couple bucks a month less. I consider getting LR + PS for $8/month a fabulous deal after what I used to spend for just Photoshop.

All the various softwares have pluses and minuses, and I have seen superb results from all of them, including DPP. Pick one that suits your style and get good at it.

Laqup wrote:[...]

https://www.adobe.com/ca/products/photoshop-lightroom-classic.html

Photography (20GB)

CAD $12.99/mo

Lightroom for desktop and mobile, Lightroom Classic, and Photoshop on desktop and iPad.

Can also be used on two devices. The price you describe contains additional cloud storage.

You can have 2 devices 'activated', but you can only use one copy of LR at the same time. You can install it on as many devices as you want and forcibly log those out if needed and activate the one you are using. You also need to log in again every 2 weeks, so do a log out/log in dance before you're going on a trip with spotty internet access.

DxO seems to lock itself to a specific device(s) and you get to deal with Frenchies pretending to be customer service if you want to swap out computers.

So for LR it doesn't matter which computer I take with me, as long as I have the external drive with the catalog and pictures with me. For DxO I need to sacrifice a license slot or use the 30 day trial.

I'm also going to assume that my 'perpetual' license of DxO will stop working after they take their servers offline.

I dislike the Adobe subscription model, but I don't find the DxO model an improvement.

Canon_Guy wrote:

SurettePhotography wrote:

I've been using DxO Photo Lab forever, and love it. However it currently doesn't support the Canon R6 Mark II. This support is coming in January. Canon DPP is a very clunky stop gap in my estimations and use. I've downloaded Capture One trial to tide me over until the support is available in DxO Photo Lab.

I find anything Adobe way over priced for my needs, and there are much better and cheaper options out there. DPP is one of them, no frills RAW processing.

I wonder how the current Adobe Photography Plan which costs the price of literally two coffees monthly can seem overpriced to someone who is able to spend thousands of dollars for the photo gear .

My favourite time is fall. As you said we spend thousands on gear and people scramble to save $10 on software. Everyone likes a deal and there is nothing wrong with it but that has almost turned into an obsession.

The plan includes allways the most up-to-date versions of fully featured unlimited Lightroom and Photoshop (including Camera Raw) as well as Lightroom for mobiles and tablets.

To me the price/performance ratio is insanely favourable.

I'm looking forward to upgrading to Photo Lab 6 when the R6 Mark II support is available.

Laqup wrote:

SurettePhotography wrote:

Canon_Guy wrote:

SurettePhotography wrote:

I've been using DxO Photo Lab forever, and love it. However it currently doesn't support the Canon R6 Mark II. This support is coming in January. Canon DPP is a very clunky stop gap in my estimations and use. I've downloaded Capture One trial to tide me over until the support is available in DxO Photo Lab.

I find anything Adobe way over priced for my needs, and there are much better and cheaper options out there. DPP is one of them, no frills RAW processing.

I wonder how the current Adobe Photography Plan which costs the price of literally two coffees monthly can seem overpriced to someone who is able to spend thousands of dollars for the photo gear .

The plan includes allways the most up-to-date versions of fully featured unlimited Lightroom and Photoshop (including Camera Raw) as well as Lightroom for mobiles and tablets.

To me the price/performance ratio is insanely favourable.

I'm looking forward to upgrading to Photo Lab 6 when the R6 Mark II support is available.

Adobe will keep costing you each and every month you use it, hardly two cups of coffee. Lightroom is $12.99 CAD per month ($155.88 per year), PhotoShop and Lightroom ($25.99 CAD per month or $311.88 per year)

DxO upgrade is $99 and I can use it on two of my Mac's. DxO you don't have to upgrade, but Adobe will keep charging you each and every month. That's a lot of coffee.

DxO is a much better investment, in my opinion, for my workflow. Your milage will vary.

This is fake news.

https://www.adobe.com/ca/products/photoshop-lightroom-classic.html

Photography (20GB)

CAD $12.99/mo

Lightroom for desktop and mobile, Lightroom Classic, and Photoshop on desktop and iPad.

Can also be used on two devices. The price you describe contains additional cloud storage.

Exactly, that is it. I pay 9.99 USD monthly - the price of two coffees, as I stated above . Really nothing to bother with considering the tremendous functionality of Lightroom and/or Photoshop which are photo world industry leaders.

SurettePhotography wrote:

Canon_Guy wrote:

SurettePhotography wrote:

I've been using DxO Photo Lab forever, and love it. However it currently doesn't support the Canon R6 Mark II. This support is coming in January. Canon DPP is a very clunky stop gap in my estimations and use. I've downloaded Capture One trial to tide me over until the support is available in DxO Photo Lab.

I find anything Adobe way over priced for my needs, and there are much better and cheaper options out there. DPP is one of them, no frills RAW processing.

I wonder how the current Adobe Photography Plan which costs the price of literally two coffees monthly can seem overpriced to someone who is able to spend thousands of dollars for the photo gear .

The plan includes allways the most up-to-date versions of fully featured unlimited Lightroom and Photoshop (including Camera Raw) as well as Lightroom for mobiles and tablets.

To me the price/performance ratio is insanely favourable.

I'm looking forward to upgrading to Photo Lab 6 when the R6 Mark II support is available.

Adobe will keep costing you each and every month you use it, hardly two cups of coffee. Lightroom is $12.99 CAD per month ($155.88 per year), PhotoShop and Lightroom ($25.99 CAD per month or $311.88 per year)

Your prices are WAY off.

DxO upgrade is $99 and I can use it on two of my Mac's. DxO you don't have to upgrade, but Adobe will keep charging you each and every month. That's a lot of coffee.

DxO is a much better investment, in my opinion, for my workflow. Your milage will vary.

I have decided to go for DPP (Free) and it gives me best integration with my Canon R6 M2. And it fulfills 75% of my photos. Then I am also looking into time it takes. For that, I opted for in-camera initiated neural processing engine offered now by Canon executed in the cloud. This engine even handles Dual Pixel, HDR PQ, etc. something very few S/W supports today.

That's $5/month and it takes care of everything like noise, sharpening, exposure, color correction, gamma, DLO, etc. That takes care of the remaining 25% with very, very few remaining requiring further touch-ups. For that darktable (free) is good enough.