Photo(!): RAW processing

In article <[email hidden]>,
[email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

"Darren G" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

<snip>

| 2. software to use to process the RAWs (preferably without incurring
| cost). Using the Canon software works... to a fashion, but it is clunky
| to use and the previews are very slow to refresh, making it hard to
| compare the effect of changes 'before & after'. And on first glances it
| doesn't seem to do batch work.
|
| Cheers
|
| --
| Darren

I've got a 20D, and it came with Canon Digital Photo Professional (DPP),
which I assume also comes with the 300D? I never even bothered installing
it because I always assumed the manufacturer's software was rubbish, and I
also assumed that the EOS File Viewer utility was the RAW converter (which
it isn't)! ...That is, until a friend recommended DPP.

He used to use Capture 1, but whilst waiting for this to support the 20D (it
now does for the Mac, but not yet for the PC), he started to use DPP and
actually liked the results! I've upgraded this to DPP 1.5 now
(http://software.canon-europe.com/Cameras/SLR_Cameras/EOS_20D10131.asp), and
I'm finding that it is actually okay to work with (albeit slightly 'clunky'
to use, as you say), even though I've also got Photoshop CS with Adobe
Camera RAW (ACR). The results are very good.

It does batch processing and generates quick previews etc, and even has a
before/after view which is instant (you can split an image, or have two
images for the before and after). I've got a slow PC, an Athlon 1Ghz, but
this works quite quickly. There are several basic tutorials on DPP here:
http://www.photoworkshop.com/canon/dpp/index.html

Thanks. This wasn't around when I got my 300D (yep, I'm jealous!) and
all it had was the zoombrowser EX, which is awful. Will have a look and
play with DPP, esp as it is free!

--
Darren
mail to darren not ng

In message <[email hidden]>, ste®
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

"Darren G" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

<snip>

| 2. software to use to process the RAWs (preferably without incurring
| cost). Using the Canon software works... to a fashion, but it is clunky
| to use and the previews are very slow to refresh, making it hard to
| compare the effect of changes 'before & after'. And on first glances it
| doesn't seem to do batch work.
|
| Cheers
|
| --
| Darren

I've got a 20D, and it came with Canon Digital Photo Professional (DPP),
which I assume also comes with the 300D?

It may do now. When I bought my 300D it came with Canon File Viewer
Utility and ZoomBrowser EX/Photo Record, which really aren't very good.

Quoted message said:

I never even bothered installing
it because I always assumed the manufacturer's software was rubbish, and I
also assumed that the EOS File Viewer utility was the RAW converter (which
it isn't)! ...That is, until a friend recommended DPP.

He used to use Capture 1, but whilst waiting for this to support the 20D (it
now does for the Mac, but not yet for the PC), he started to use DPP and
actually liked the results! I've upgraded this to DPP 1.5 now
(http://software.canon-europe.com/Cameras/SLR_Cameras/EOS_20D10131.asp), and
I'm finding that it is actually okay to work with (albeit slightly 'clunky'
to use, as you say), even though I've also got Photoshop CS with Adobe
Camera RAW (ACR). The results are very good.

It does batch processing and generates quick previews etc, and even has a
before/after view which is instant (you can split an image, or have two
images for the before and after). I've got a slow PC, an Athlon 1Ghz, but
this works quite quickly. There are several basic tutorials on DPP here:
http://www.photoworkshop.com/canon/dpp/index.html

Best of all, it's free! If you just want to convert RAW files, then I'm
sure it would do you. However, in my workflow, I'm finding that I convert
the RAW files (with a bit of editing for white balance, any exposure
compensation if needed, hue & saturation adjustment) to 16 bit TIF's, then
load them into Photoshop for a bit of Levels adjustment, sharpening etc.

Good luck!

Ste

"Darren G" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...
| In article <[email hidden]>,
| [email hidden] says...
| >
| > "Darren G" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
| > news:[email hidden]...
| >
| > <snip>
| >
| > | 2. software to use to process the RAWs (preferably without incurring
| > | cost). Using the Canon software works... to a fashion, but it is
clunky
| > | to use and the previews are very slow to refresh, making it hard to
| > | compare the effect of changes 'before & after'. And on first glances
it
| > | doesn't seem to do batch work.
| > |
| > | Cheers
| > |
| > | --
| > | Darren
| >
| >
| > I've got a 20D, and it came with Canon Digital Photo Professional (DPP),
| > which I assume also comes with the 300D? I never even bothered
installing
| > it because I always assumed the manufacturer's software was rubbish, and
I
| > also assumed that the EOS File Viewer utility was the RAW converter
(which
| > it isn't)! ...That is, until a friend recommended DPP.
| >
| > He used to use Capture 1, but whilst waiting for this to support the 20D
(it
| > now does for the Mac, but not yet for the PC), he started to use DPP and
| > actually liked the results! I've upgraded this to DPP 1.5 now
| > (http://software.canon-europe.com/Cameras/SLR_Cameras/EOS_20D10131.asp),
and
| > I'm finding that it is actually okay to work with (albeit slightly
'clunky'
| > to use, as you say), even though I've also got Photoshop CS with Adobe
| > Camera RAW (ACR). The results are very good.
| >
| > It does batch processing and generates quick previews etc, and even has
a
| > before/after view which is instant (you can split an image, or have two
| > images for the before and after). I've got a slow PC, an Athlon 1Ghz,
but
| > this works quite quickly. There are several basic tutorials on DPP
here:
| > http://www.photoworkshop.com/canon/dpp/index.html
| >
|
| Thanks. This wasn't around when I got my 300D (yep, I'm jealous!) and
| all it had was the zoombrowser EX, which is awful. Will have a look and
| play with DPP, esp as it is free!
|
| --
| Darren

I wasn't sure if DPP came with the 300D or not (so it might be free or
possibly not), but I did check the 300D downloads on the Canon website and
the 1.5 update (i.e., probably not the full version, but why list it there
if it wasn't included?!?) was listed at number 36:
http://software.canon-europe.com/Cameras/SLR_Cameras/EOS_300D10037.asp My
version of DPP was contained in a black wallet, on a seperate CD to the EOS
Digital Solutions CD.

Ste

In article <[email hidden]>,
[email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

In article <[email hidden]>,
[email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

"Darren G" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

<snip>

| 2. software to use to process the RAWs (preferably without incurring
| cost). Using the Canon software works... to a fashion, but it is clunky
| to use and the previews are very slow to refresh, making it hard to
| compare the effect of changes 'before & after'. And on first glances it
| doesn't seem to do batch work.
|
| Cheers
|
| --
| Darren

I've got a 20D, and it came with Canon Digital Photo Professional (DPP),
which I assume also comes with the 300D? I never even bothered installing
it because I always assumed the manufacturer's software was rubbish, and I
also assumed that the EOS File Viewer utility was the RAW converter (which
it isn't)! ...That is, until a friend recommended DPP.

He used to use Capture 1, but whilst waiting for this to support the 20D (it
now does for the Mac, but not yet for the PC), he started to use DPP and
actually liked the results! I've upgraded this to DPP 1.5 now
(http://software.canon-europe.com/Cameras/SLR_Cameras/EOS_20D10131.asp), and
I'm finding that it is actually okay to work with (albeit slightly 'clunky'
to use, as you say), even though I've also got Photoshop CS with Adobe
Camera RAW (ACR). The results are very good.

It does batch processing and generates quick previews etc, and even has a
before/after view which is instant (you can split an image, or have two
images for the before and after). I've got a slow PC, an Athlon 1Ghz, but
this works quite quickly. There are several basic tutorials on DPP here:
http://www.photoworkshop.com/canon/dpp/index.html

Thanks. This wasn't around when I got my 300D (yep, I'm jealous!) and
all it had was the zoombrowser EX, which is awful. Will have a look and
play with DPP, esp as it is free!

after a first play it seems to be pretty good, doing most of the things
that C1 can do: levels, curves, white balance, exposure comp,
brightness, saturation, contrast, hue, resizing, batch processing, etc.

And all for free.

--
Darren
mail to darren not ng

Hi,

I use BreezeBrowser which is (good and easy to use).

Not free though.

Have a look at:

http://www.breezesys.com/BreezeBrowser/

--
Carol Haynes
Reply address is set to vaporize - don't expect a reply!

Gordon Harris said:

Quoted message said:

I still try and take the best image I can in camera :-)

Isn't that what REAL photographers always do?
;-)

That's what I've always done, it's just that my definition of "best
image" has now changed. I now take the best image in camera that will
give me the best quality final image at the processing stage.

When I shot slides I treated the in-camera shot as the final result.
When I pressed the shutter, the photo was finished. Nowadays, with both
digital and film, I treat the in-camera shot as an intermediate stage.
There's no longer any need to produce a good looking result straight out
of the camera. That's not to say that I don't try to capture good
looking results in-camera, just that it's not always necessary, and it
sometimes isn't even desirable.

For example, take a very high contrast scene with bright sky and dark
land. With slide film there are two ways of dealing with this. One is
to expose for only the highlights or the shadows and compose the scene
accordingly, accepting that detail will be lost (for example a
silhouette with a black foreground), the other would be to use a
graduated filter, but that limits you to a straight line division and a
fixed amount of blur at the transition, which doesn't suit a lot of
scenes, particularly those with an irregular skyline.

With digital I get far better results by taking two separate exposures
and blending them later using layer masking. Each individual photograph
is bad, but the end result is what matters.

Post processing techniques have also encouraged me to photograph scenes
that I previously wouldn't have bothered with, because they don't
produce good results in camera, for example shots in bad light and bad
weather.

Fortunately I enjoy post processing.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk

ste® said:

I've got a 20D, and it came with Canon Digital Photo Professional
(DPP), which I assume also comes with the 300D?

No, it didn't, although it may now.

Quoted message said:

Best of all, it's free!

I assume the "update" is the full version? I've downloaded it, I'll
give it a try.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk

Chris Street said:

Having just splashed out on a 20D myself I'm also working through the
same process. One thing that did disappoint me immencsly was that the
instructions for DPP are on the CD as PDF files. I agree that for a
cheapo network card this would be fine, but for a £1000+ camera
system it leaves a nasty feeling of penny pinching in the extreme.

I know what you mean. This sort of thing is becoming more and more
common.

I particularly hate Canon's habit of not including lens hoods with their
lenses. £650 for a lens and they can't throw in a cheap bit of plastic
with it! Then you have to go to the hassle of ordering and waiting for
it, then paying a ridiculous amount of money for it.

Tight gits!

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk

Chris Townsend said:

Quoted message said:

2. THE REFERENCE FILE. I batch convert all my RAW files into JPEGs

Quoted message said:

With Capture One you don't need to do this as it shows you the
original image without need of conversion. The RAW files are the
reference files.

Same with the Canon Zoom Browser, Photoshop Album, IMatch and the Browse
facility in Photoshop. But in all those cases it has to convert the RAW
file before you can look at it closely and it takes time to do that.
Not long, but it's not instant and zooming in can be fiddly.

ACDSee is still my browser of choice, it displays JPEGs exceptionally
quickly, even large ones and I can zoom in to study tiny details in an
instant. I can flip back and fore instantly between different images at
maximum zoom to compare details like sharpness. I do this a lot. No
RAW browser is so quick and thus convenient.

Personal preference maybe, but I find reference JPEGs much more
convenient, and I don't mind allocating the extra space. It's only 30
gig or so at the moment.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk

pete bland said:

I see Adobe now has a Photoshop plugin for working with various RAW
formats:

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html

Now included in Photoshop as standard.

Quoted message said:

Presumably the plugin will work with other image editors (PSP,
Photopaint etc) which accept standard plugins?

I'm not sure it would, I don't think it's a standard plugin, it may be
specific to Photoshop. It's not like a filter, it's part of the file
opening process.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk

Paul Saunders said:

Chris Street said:

Having just splashed out on a 20D myself I'm also working through the
same process. One thing that did disappoint me immencsly was that the
instructions for DPP are on the CD as PDF files. I agree that for a
cheapo network card this would be fine, but for a £1000+ camera
system it leaves a nasty feeling of penny pinching in the extreme.

I know what you mean. This sort of thing is becoming more and more
common.

Ah, but think of the planet. Most people don't read most manuals,
and even those that do, most of them only do so once, and of
them most don't read the entire manual. It's usually just a
waste of good trees, packaging and eventually landfill.

--
Trevor Barton

In message <[email hidden]>, Paul Saunders
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

Chris Townsend said:

Quoted message said:

2. THE REFERENCE FILE. I batch convert all my RAW files into JPEGs

Quoted message said:

With Capture One you don't need to do this as it shows you the
original image without need of conversion. The RAW files are the
reference files.

Same with the Canon Zoom Browser, Photoshop Album, IMatch and the Browse
facility in Photoshop. But in all those cases it has to convert the RAW
file before you can look at it closely and it takes time to do that.
Not long, but it's not instant and zooming in can be fiddly.

Capture One is pretty fast and zooming in is easy. I also have IMatch,
which is a great program, but I use Capture One for viewing RAW files.

Quoted message said:

ACDSee is still my browser of choice, it displays JPEGs exceptionally
quickly, even large ones and I can zoom in to study tiny details in an
instant. I can flip back and fore instantly between different images at
maximum zoom to compare details like sharpness. I do this a lot. No
RAW browser is so quick and thus convenient.

I haven't tried ACDSee so I can't compare it with Capture One but I can
do that quickly in C1, though not instantly. I do it a lot too - it's
how I sort out new images and decide which ones to keep and which to
delete.

Quoted message said:

Personal preference maybe, but I find reference JPEGs much more
convenient, and I don't mind allocating the extra space. It's only 30
gig or so at the moment.

I guess it depends on the software. Generally if I'm viewing a RAW file
it's because I'm going to convert it for some purpose or other, which
means I need to open it in C1 anyway.

Carol Haynes said:

I use BreezeBrowser which is (good and easy to use).
http://www.breezesys.com/BreezeBrowser/

Thanks Carol, I'll take a closer look at this. The ability to compare
up to four images simultaneously would be very useful to me.

I also noticed this interesting sounding feature;

"Improved highlight detail with combined raw conversion . BreezeBrowser
Pro's unique combined conversion combines the excellent colors of normal
conversion with a second raw conversion optimized for highlight detail."

Downloading the trial version now.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk

Paul Saunders said:

Thanks Carol, I'll take a closer look at this. The ability to compare
up to four images simultaneously would be very useful to me.

I also noticed this interesting sounding feature;

"Improved highlight detail with combined raw conversion .
BreezeBrowser Pro's unique combined conversion combines the excellent
colors of normal conversion with a second raw conversion optimized
for highlight detail."

Downloading the trial version now.

That's the Pro version, to be clear.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk

Trevor Barton said:

Ah, but think of the planet. Most people don't read most manuals,
and even those that do, most of them only do so once, and of
them most don't read the entire manual. It's usually just a
waste of good trees, packaging and eventually landfill.

Perhaps, but more trees are wasted on far less important stuff.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk

In article <[email hidden]>, Trevor Barton
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

Paul Saunders said:

Chris Street said:

Having just splashed out on a 20D myself I'm also working through the
same process. One thing that did disappoint me immencsly was that the
instructions for DPP are on the CD as PDF files. I agree that for a
cheapo network card this would be fine, but for a 0 >>> system it leaves a nasty feeling of penny pinching in the extreme.

I know what you mean. This sort of thing is becoming more and more
common.

Ah, but think of the planet. Most people don't read most manuals,
and even those that do, most of them only do so once, and of
them most don't read the entire manual. It's usually just a
waste of good trees, packaging and eventually landfill.

And when it come to software or products whose user interface is
software driven the manual can very quickly become out of date. It makes
very little sense to waste paper by printing manuals which then become
obsolete in a few months when the user interface has changed...

--

Dominic Sexton
http://www.dscs.demon.co.uk/

Chris Townsend said:

Capture One is pretty fast and zooming in is easy. I also have IMatch,
which is a great program, but I use Capture One for viewing RAW files.

Zooming in to an individual file may be easy, but how easy is it to
switch between two different zoomed in files?

Quoted message said:

I guess it depends on the software. Generally if I'm viewing a RAW
file it's because I'm going to convert it for some purpose or other,
which means I need to open it in C1 anyway.

I usually study the reference jpegs in ACDSee first to decide which ones
to convert, that's the fastest and most convenient method I've yet
found.

Having said that, see my post on Breeze Browser Pro. This could be a
better solution.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk

In article <[email hidden]>, Trevor Barton
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

Ah, but think of the planet. Most people don't read most manuals,
and even those that do, most of them only do so once, and of
them most don't read the entire manual. It's usually just a
waste of good trees, packaging and eventually landfill.

Most of the time the problem is finding the language you want to read.
About 1/6th of the manual is in English and the rest is recycling
material.
--
Bill Grey
http://www.billboy.co.uk

In message <[email hidden]>, Paul Saunders
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

Chris Townsend said:

Capture One is pretty fast and zooming in is easy. I also have IMatch,
which is a great program, but I use Capture One for viewing RAW files.

Zooming in to an individual file may be easy, but how easy is it to
switch between two different zoomed in files?

It's easy and quick though you can't have two files open at once.
However files open almost instantly and you have all the thumbnails
visible so I don't find any problem switching between files.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I guess it depends on the software. Generally if I'm viewing a RAW
file it's because I'm going to convert it for some purpose or other,
which means I need to open it in C1 anyway.

I usually study the reference jpegs in ACDSee first to decide which ones
to convert, that's the fastest and most convenient method I've yet
found.

I do the same with the RAW files in C1.

Quoted message said:

Having said that, see my post on Breeze Browser Pro. This could be a
better solution.

It does look good but as I'm now used to working with C1, which means I
can use it quickly, I doubt I'll change.

--
Chris

http://www.auchnarrow.demon.co.uk

"Paul Saunders" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Presumably the plugin will work with other image editors (PSP,
Photopaint etc) which accept standard plugins?

I'm not sure it would, I don't think it's a standard plugin, it may be
specific to Photoshop. It's not like a filter, it's part of the file
opening process.

Not a chance - it doesn't even work with other versions of PhotoShop. You
have to have PhotoShop CS.

They have even withdrawn the previous version of the plugin that worked with
PS 7 from sale - not that it was worth it as it was nearly the same price as
the upgrade to PS CS

--
Carol Haynes
Reply address is set to vaporize - don't expect a reply!