Sharing my Canon DPP 4 workflow

[MannyV]

Thank you for these tips.

 

[Larry Rexley]

I'm glad this thread was revived. I hadn't seen it before. It has a lot of great information and advice.

I too find DPP 4 to be quite capable. It is slow but that's for a reason --- it's a lot of processing for some of the features, and the results are worth it. it's my first-stage processing for all my RAW files, and for most of them it's all I need. Occasionally I'll use some of the de-noising and fine contrast settings in darktable, if I can't get the result I want from DPP alone.

For the most part I follow similar workflows and agree with the comments about control over sharpness, gamma, lens corrections and so on. I think DPP is quite underrated.

Occasionally if the image needs a more fine-tuned approach than using DPP's basic controls, I appreciate the ability to control the 'curve' for all or individual color channels, and also like the custom color sliders a lot.

For sharpness, I'd like to point out that DPP gives you the capability to get extremely, extremely sharp photos at the pixel resolution (if that's needed - perhaps for extreme cropping or very large final images sizes). With a relatively low ISO (as close to 100 as possible) and a very sharp lens like the EF-M 22mm f2 or EF-M 11-22 IS STM, it's possible to use sharpness strength 10 with fineness and threshold both set to 0 in DPP.

You might be amazed how much fine detail and texture is in your images at those sharpness settings, at the pixel level. Here's an example with one of my sharpest vintage lenses, a Minolta MD (iii) 50mm f2 lens, used at f8, ISO 100. Being a vintage lens, no lens corrections were applied.

I haven't been able to get such sharp results with other software, processing Raw files.

Canon M6ii, vintage Minolta MD (iii) 50mm f2 lens at f8, 1/640s, ISO 100

 

[MannyV]

You might be amazed how much fine detail and texture is in your images at those sharpness settings, at the pixel level.

Thank you. Agree. Another important matter is for new Canon lenses. DPP will have the lens profile

The DLO (Digital Lens Optimizer) performs a lot of magic.

 

[JustUs7]

I had some fun doing this in DPP4 using the brush tool. I wasn’t super careful with the edges. Just playing around.

I’ve also used the clone brush to clean up some images where it was a quick shot out the car window and the door frame intruded into the corner of the image. Cloned the sky and made the door frame disappear.

I also use it for focus stacking like the image below:

I don’t recall how many images, but this was done using auto focus bracketing in camera and stacked in DPP4.

 

[dan the man p]

I like DPP4 and have used it for a long time. I run Linux and have been able to get DPP4 working with Wine, although the last time I tried I needed to do some convoluted workarounds to get it installed (it works fine once installed). See here: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/64612633

Lately, though, I've been using Darktable more often. The motivating reason was that I got a Sony camera for my kite aerial photography hobby and didn't want to have to use two different postprocessing tools. Darktable has come a long way since I last used it several years ago. After a little bit of getting used to it and saving some presets, I find I'm able to get comparable or better results with to DPP4 most, at least for the things I care about, without spending much more time. (I don't know about detail at pixel peeping levels, since I don't normally worry about that. The sharpness appears close enough to the same to me.) One thing that is a lot harder is to get nice skin tones, though, especially in low light. But it has a lot of other features that DPP4 lacks, most notably selective editing with masks for pretty much all of its modules. The other thing is that I find DPP4 slow to the point that it is annoying, but that may be partly due to running it with Wine. Darktable is much snappier.

Overall I still like both tools but will probably mainly use Darktable from now on, occasionally doing comparisons with DPP4. Actually, doing these kinds of comparisons helps me get better with both, since sometimes I see something I like about one and then go figure out how to emulate it in the other.

 

[muetdhiver]

Wow, what a wonderful thread.

I have a question about metadatas in DPP4. Is there a way to export the IPTC medata from a xmp file with the same name as the picture when exporting in jpg ?

I'm using Exiftool but it's so strange DPP can't nativeley save the iptc from the xmp to the jpg ? I imagine you apply metadata after exporting ?

@RLight : I love your ISO/DLO value table. It would be great to see it incorporated (and customisable) in DPP... (I also use a approximative table with ISO / NR level ; I can't get why it is not automated, even poorly).

With theses 3 options DPP would be for me the ultimate tool.

Excuse my bad English...

 

[seliMcc]

Hello @RLight.



Sorry to revive this ancient thread, but it’s proved useful to me so I thought I would keep it going.



I’m tagging you in particular due to what I can see all over this forum, you seem to have a very astute insight into DPP.



I recently purchased an R1. When I got it things looked terrible in LR, I suspect it wasn’t fully supported. Anyway, I downloaded DPP in order to at least get a bit of the benefit of my upgrade (coming from a 5div).



My my. What had I been missing?!



Anyway I wanted to teach myself about the programme, but googling just yields ‘it’s terrible, use LR’, or ‘it’s dated and slow’.



I came accros this post of yours and I just wanted a little more info on this interesting titbit if I may trouble you.



Are you saying that these are the levels one must put the dlo slider to when processing in DPP, according to the ISO of a given shot? ie, the higher the iso the less the slider?

If I may question you further, What (in your opinion) then is the best route with sharpening? I mean, the ‘blurb’ says to turn off all sharpening whilst adjusting dlo. It then doesn’t say to put it back on. And some of the internet seems to think dlo does enough sharpening. I didn’t think it did in my experience, but then occasionally it was over the top - but until I saw your post I didn’t really know what I should be doing with the dlo slider or how it relates to sharpening at all.



Another post somewhere else suggests that one must slide the slider until you reach the point where it says ‘max’ (which apparently changes per lens). However max never appears when I use it.



Anyway, any insight you have (or anyone else has for that matter), would be very helpful!!

Cheers.



m

 

[RLight]

Hello @RLight.

Sorry to revive this ancient thread, but it’s proved useful to me so I thought I would keep it going.

I’m tagging you in particular due to what I can see all over this forum, you seem to have a very astute insight into DPP.

I recently purchased an R1. When I got it things looked terrible in LR, I suspect it wasn’t fully supported. Anyway, I downloaded DPP in order to at least get a bit of the benefit of my upgrade (coming from a 5div).

My my. What had I been missing?!

Anyway I wanted to teach myself about the programme, but googling just yields ‘it’s terrible, use LR’, or ‘it’s dated and slow’.

I came accros this post of yours and I just wanted a little more info on this interesting titbit if I may trouble you.

Are you saying that these are the levels one must put the dlo slider to when processing in DPP, according to the ISO of a given shot? ie, the higher the iso the less the slider?

If I may question you further, What (in your opinion) then is the best route with sharpening? I mean, the ‘blurb’ says to turn off all sharpening whilst adjusting dlo. It then doesn’t say to put it back on. And some of the internet seems to think dlo does enough sharpening. I didn’t think it did in my experience, but then occasionally it was over the top - but until I saw your post I didn’t really know what I should be doing with the dlo slider or how it relates to sharpening at all.

Another post somewhere else suggests that one must slide the slider until you reach the point where it says ‘max’ (which apparently changes per lens). However max never appears when I use it.

Anyway, any insight you have (or anyone else has for that matter), would be very helpful!!

Cheers.

m

https://web.archive.org/web/20180325071029/http://web.canon.jp/imaging/dlo/

https://snapshot.canon-asia.com/art...stments-to-do-with-digital-photo-professional

https://support.usa.canon.com/kb/s/article/ART162839

.

Some notes about DLO...

It applies some sharpness as part of its algorithm, hence to avoid oversharpening, Canon recommends starting at zero before applying.

In practice? If you note, DLO is now onboard for all RF lenses as the profile is built into the lens itself so once attached to a Canon body, all SOOC JPEGs can use it, and/or, all RAWs will be tagged with default DLO levels for the ISO level at time of capture.

Here's some examples...

ISO 100 - 35.3

ISO 125 - 32.8

ISO 160 - 30.4

ISO 200 - 28.1

ISO 250 - 25.0

ISO 320 - 23.3

ISO 400 - 21.0

ISO 500 - 18.6

ISO 640 - 16.2

ISO 800 - 15.2

ISO 1000 - 14.2

ISO 1250 - 13.8

ISO 1600 - 13.4

.

Using higher levels of DLO (than above at a given ISO) are in order when correcting for Diffraction which DLO specializes in.

Some lenses, think not L, benefit more from DLO than others as DLO is Canon's own internal profiling of the lenses, not a third party, think Canon on the bench profiles these lenses and creates the DLO profiles as well as in theory during optical design. The EF-M 22mm, EF-M 55-200mm come to mind in terms of really benefiting from DLO (lenses with inherent optical aberration which DLO corrects for). Anything in diffraction territory also applies, which if you note, a lot of lenses are "going dark", that is, starting at higher apertures... My RF 100-400 comes to mind which at say F/8, which it starts at on the long end my R5 Mark II, is already in diffraction territory, and benefits from DLO.

DLO - High (different from the default DLO - Low), is available in camera on newer Canon's, think my former R3 and now R5 II have it; it slows / reduces processing, beware, and thus reduces max number of shots in buffer... I typically will use in camera processing later in batch and apply to a number of shots (DLO - High) when I really want to wring the last drop out of something that way I can shoot without buffer penalty, but still squeeze out the last drop of say either a RF 100-400, or say an RF 35mm f/1.8 IS STM which has a lot aberrations that DLO can clean up.

Regarding sharpness otherwise or what I do in workflow? Very subjective. I'm a big fan of "Auto" or "Fine Detail" Picture Profiles, which Auto is not Standard, Auto, weighs the scene and applies shifts in sharpness deriving from one of the default profiles depending on the scene. Most of the time this is some slight shift from Standard. So what do I do? I just turn it on (DLO) in processing. Really, it's only in older bodies like the EOS M, or 5D series that aren't RF, where you need to do it by hand per say with DLO, and I'd reference the table above I might add. ISO values above 1600 get very persnickety. Canon has some algorithm for determining true low light if you will, beyond 1600, which varies depending upon the scene. Example, I can use ISO 3200 in Sunny16... I have a high SnR (signal to noise ratio) obviously but may be choosing to use a higher ISO because I'm either shooting say a DO lens (f/11 or higher), or say wanting to push a really fast shutter speed, that's not actually low SnR. Now, take shooting ISO12800 in a dark night venue? Low SnR, I have to use a higher ISO or slow that shutter way down, or just use a fast lens. All to say, DLO levels for high ISOs get tricky as I gather the way DLO operates, becomes less effective with higher noise. Anyhow all to say, these days if I want more DLO? I'm doing it in camera on my R5 II and using DLO - high, otherwise, I just leave it on DLO - standard full time. When I process a shot in DPP4 by choice, DLO is already applied when processing a RAW from a newer Canon R body. I'm not shifting sharpness , etc when doing so, I'm leaving these as is, and just adjusting whatever I need to, to taste. DLO itself only comes in when I need to fix something, again say diffraction, where I'll grab the slider and adjust by hand, or, even I'm reprocessing an old RAW from say my former M6 II on a "dirtier lens".

 

[seliMcc]

Thank you very much for this detailed response and the attached links. Very insightful and it will help with my decisions going forwards.



I did indeed once switch on the dlo high setting in camera and got stung, I needed to wait for several minutes before the buffer emptied and I could reshoot no turned it immediately off and decided to rely on it in post. However, if standard doesn’t practically affect in camera usage, I may turn that in. I’ll do some tests to ascertain that.



I only have one RF lense, the 70-105/4L. I don’t use it that much (perhaps I should). I use a whole host of EF lenses (all L), perhaps that’s why I didn’t understand dlo as well as I could have.



Anyway, as I expected, you have given me plenty to go on.



Appreciate it!

M