Feedback for Digital Photo Professional 4.

Processing
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Hello, community of experts.

I’m new to the platform, and re-learning about post-processing.

First and foremost, I do not like or appreciate editing and post-processing of nature and natural objects, including human beings. That said, as a curious researcher and inventor, I would like to minimally beautify my clicked photos and videos to shine for a little longer time than what my eyes could support.

I tried my hands recently on DarkTable. I understood that is too much editing for me. A simple and scene intelligent Sigmoid could really do my editing job, but for that I had to keep a 5GB plus of files on my Mac mini M4. Plus, without saying, there’s a steeper learning curve for people coming from raster editing on photoshop 15 years ago, to a software like DarkTable.

I accidentally discovered a software bundle provided by Canon where there’s a tool called Digital Photo Professional. I tried some automatic bits with some bits where I moved the slider where it said it will add more light to the scene. I think I may have destroyed pixels, but in my experience of raster editing, it was the first time it really didn’t create dead dark pixels there.

Can anyone here please put some light on how good or bad is this tool coming from an agency like Canon which is known for different kinds of software for a specific documentation via imagery workflow: clicking photos with a handheld device, made for the masses, not for taste.

As a utility software creator myself, I would definitely like to know from experts here, what do they have to say about how this works behind the scenes. Is this technology at par with Sony, Google, Apple, Samsung and today’s generative AI machine learning data set?

Is there a plus point for RAW photos created by Canon’s camera to be handled by Digital PhotoPro 4 or any other software like Darktable?

Views are personal, I do not intend to offend anyone here.

Have a great day, planet earth!

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Hi @hemantchhabra , welcome to this forum. You might be right to think darktable offers to much for you. At least at this stage of your life/development fase.

I unfortunately cannot comment on the software you are asking for. But you might have a look around on de Canon fora at something like dpreview.com or google a bit around. There will be plenty to find and read.

Kind regards,
Jetze

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Please understand that this is a forum for open-source applications. There are plenty of other forums out there where you are likely to get much better answers for your question regarding a tool that is fully off-topic for this discussion board. Many of use never used the software you are asking about.

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Editing my photos with RawTherapee, ART and darktable, I find the clumsy Canon’s program as a valuable reference, when it comes to Canon things.

To discuss it, there are other places available, I presume.

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I have the canon DPP software loaded since I own a couple of Canons. However, I rarely use the software because I edit RAW files exclusively in DT. That being said, I feel the Canon software is not too bad if you are intimidated by or not wanting to learn DT. DT is in a totally different league to raster editors like Photoshop. As for machine learning I prefer actual intelligence over AI when I edit and have no real interest in AI for editing. Just my personal view. I love DT.

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I feel the Canon software is not too bad if you are wanting to learn DT.

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Second part of my answer…

I guess your first decision will be this: do I make RAW picturefiles or JPEG’s.
My advise will be to set your camera to both.

Why do I say this?
Because when you only take JPEG’s and alter something in there some of the original info gets lost when you save the alterations. If later you want to change back to the original state you’ll find the file slightly different and it will not be possible to return exactly to where you started. The more often you do this with a JPEG file the worse it gets. This process of wear and tear happens to RAW files as well.

A lot of photo editors change your files and you will never be able to return to the original if you have not made a back up.

There is another group of photo editors which do not change your files when you process them. Changes are put in a database or in a so called sidecar file or both. In this case you change the values in the database or sidecar file and the original stays as it originally was. You always are able to return to the exact same situation when you start anew.

Short remark on JPEG vs RAW:
When you took this lovely sunset but missed the sweet exposure spot and have to change the image to regain those beautiful clouds and colors you will be so thankful you’ve saved a RAW file as well as they offer you much more leeway for making strong corrections and manipulations.

Bottom line is this: are you sure you will not evolve from where you are now to a more photo editing eager posture? If not find the Canon software and shoot JPEG. If not sure and you really care about some of the pictures I would suggest you to store both files on your diskdrive and make a backup every now and then. Use the Canon software on the JPEG’s and leave the RAW’s for a point a bit further in the future and have fun again when you find out what is possible.

Have fun!

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Canon’s DPP-4 is pretty good as a free bundled software. It can help you get into raw processing without any additional investment, you can use it to replicate Canon’s own styles and it supports panorama stitching and focus merging. The downside is that the software can be clunky and isn’t well suited for more advanced editing.

I know people who use the manufacturer’s bundle software quite successfully. You can start with that and then move on to something like Darktable, Rawtherapee, ART, etc if you feel the need and of course there are commercial products as well.

Reddit/Canon is probably a good community to use to ask questions and get more information, but also be prepared for a lot of negative comments about the software as well.

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As far as I can tell it doesn’t offer panorama stitching anymore. Please tell me I am wrong. I own a Canon R7 and would love to do some stitching with Canon’s Panorama Stitch which use to be a very good program. It seems to have been abandoned now.

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Maybe you’re right. I guess it’s one of many reasons why people don’t take OEM software seriously.

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thank you for highlighting. I will be more aware next time. Can you please highlight, what kind of experts are here and what exactly to ‘specifically’ discuss?

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thank you so much for your response.

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thank you for your response.

w.r.t. AI, I’d like to clarify on my observation,

  • what Canon is doing w.r.t. teaching their ML is using their own understanding and learnings from developing and creating products for capturing raster for masses, their expertise domain being sciences around imaging/optics, material and physics around capturing it on silicone. Quite different, similarly I’d say Leica would have their own proprietary knowledge on the same science and maybe added attributes from our real life. This is my accurate assumption, I have not read research or patents about this as of yet.

  • what software companies like Google, Apple are doing is from a limited understanding of these subjects, never realising that the truth of an event could not be required to be digital edited always. When they capture wrong at the source, they may never be able to train anything holistically.

This above-mentioned difference, I feel somehow they are speaking for themselves a bit here and there in the application as features.

All over the world, truth capturing products are extremely limited.
What is the truth you ask? A capability of a device to exactly capture an event, without interfering with various attributes of human bias - software manipulation, color correction, voice modulation, capturing only certain frequencies because industry giants wanted to always develop beauty, etc etc.

I hope I was able to explain the difference in set of data created by these two approaches - Canon and rest, differently, and that being highlighted in various forms with DPP. In turn I’m trying to arrive at that, there’s a device that will go closer to the truth while letting a consumer exploit only bits of RAW capabilities that are optically enabled in conjunction with the software and they do not destroy the history of the event captured in that imagery.

Now that said, I reach here to experts to find out if this has been identified and can it be exploited for good of the truth.

A little about the truth - 120 years ago there were events happened that were captured. They hold truer than a photo from 2003, 2006, 2009, 2025. A photo from 2025, taken from any generic optics and software driven device, will always and always have a bias embedded somewhere, so if we survive by 2040-2050, what we will see then will be different from the reality of the event today if one will be present today in that event, unintoxicated.

A century ago, human beings only knew to record an event, didn’t know how to manipulate. 120 years of industrial revolution and political evolution brought about consumerism of the shiny. Shiny only sells. So even if I document the dead today, that will look beautiful.

What I mean to arrive at is, documenting an event as is, has become the most difficult task that unless you were present yourself in that event, you can really make out if it’s just politically charged or there is more to it than what meets the human eye sensor. That’s how a photo says a thousand words, by capturing the truth, but not what a bunch of industrialists think otherwise will sell more.

I understand this is not the forum, but I see response from others like me, so I’m responding in continuation. You may feel otherwise and we still can be creators :slight_smile:

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I mostly understood your point, and I have been on JPEGs for about 10000 photos. Very recently, I started to try RAW. I come from a time when Camera RaW application was a free download without signing up for any other Adobe product. Out of curiosity, I wanted to see all the newly enabled capabilities. Is why I reached here with the mindset to not post process beyond necessity, and try and capture at the source more purposefully to my taste.

I also understand that you’re trying to say DPP save directly to the RAW file, whereas DarkTable, doesn’t. So as someone with a curious mindset, I know I may come back to photos of kittens who’ve adopted me, every 6 months to compare their growth and change of coat and depth of color in their eyes etc, I want the truth be captured, so I always export whatever little editing I do and dump them JPEGs on a couple of platforms for me to consume later. I keep the RAW and JPEG of the source as is.

Thank you for your comment :slight_smile:

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Hmm…maybe an overstatement here. But it took a lot of skill to fake images back then. Also look at the works of the respected landscape photographer Ansel Adams. I personally describe photography as the art of manipulating light. But true, AI has cheapen the art of manipulation to the point we no longer respect manipulation and just presume it is AI generated. :wink:
Shackleton expedition pictures were 'faked' | UK news | The Guardian'&text=This%20is%20the%20archive%20of,and%20operated%20by%20Tortoise%20Media.

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That, unfortunately is not possible. There are limitations in camera technology and the practicability of exact calibration. Most important, however, is the context dependency and subjectivity of human perception.

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it’s the best software available if you want to get similar results as with in camera processing - they know everything about their signalprocessing. Furthermore they know best how to cope with lens weaknesses and can use this for getting a proper result.
Free tools like darktable rely on reverse engineered stuff in decoders or lens correction based on generic algorithms using custom made profiles (depending on arbitrary gear and skills of supporters)

If you’re satisfied with results, that can be also generated by in camera processing, then dpp4 is fine - if you want to edit images, then a raw editor like darktabe with ability to use masking eg. can be the tools to get better results …

Unfortunately canon doesn’t share their image processing know how and also not their knowledge on lens characteristics and lens correction…

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I too come from the Adobe space, quite recent in fact, I started darktable beginning of this year. Still learning a lot every session. I find dt much more fun than LR combined with PS. It feels as if I’m more active thinking about what I do, as if I’m more aware about what possibilities there are. I do not believe the one eco system to be better then the other. But I do am happy not yearly to pay a lot anymore having to accept Adobe’s left over errors they know they are there and never going to work on them. I feel very much at home here so to say. Your mileage may differ of course.

Actually I can’t say anything about DPP so certainly not that it saves to RAW. I just don’t know but you have to be aware about the possibility.

So hard… I try to make decent pictures of my wife’s very colorfull artwork…

You’re very welcome!

Regards, Jetze

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A camera is a set of brightness-measuring sensors behind color filters, behind a lens. There’s no magic here.

Color reconstruction works well for a known, wide-spectrum light source. But it reduces a continuous spectrum of infinitely many wavelengths to three particular color filters, which mimic the photoreceptors in our eyes, such that a three-color representation will evoke a similar tristimulus response in our brain as the original scene did. In mixed lighting, or narrow-specrum lighting, metamerisms are unavoidable. Neither Canon nor God can recover correct color from distorted (low CRI) light.

Furthermore, reality has a huge gamut of brightness. A summer day can vary by as much as 20 stops between the sun and a deep shadow. A camera can capture a low teen of that (~14 stops), a screen can display 8-10, and a print show 5-6. Displaying the contents of a photo on a screen or print therefore necessarily loses information. No amount of software can recover that, either.

What I’m trying to get at is that “truth” is a very brittle subject in photography. We photographers choose what to include and what to leave out. Our little brains can not help but assume that a rendition is representative of a real scene, but there is no knowing what happened outside the frame, or a second before or after the shutter was tripped. Consequently, a photo is always merely a slice of reality, in time and space and color. Personally, I’m interpreting that more as historical fiction, than actual fact.

Frankly, I find it relatively unimportant what particular piece of software was used to generate the rendition. But if Canon’s software works for you, I’m happy for you. They all can produce faithful representations, or more creative renditions. The choice is up to the operator, not the tool.

Darktable is by its nature a bit more of a tinkerer’s tool than a one-click solution. So perhaps that search for “truth” isn’t particularly resonant in this particular forum. But to each their own. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

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Oh, they knew very well how to manipulate photos. It was harder to do, certainly, but not that hard.

Capturing the absolute truth in a photo is not possible. As @bastibe says, the technology we have is simply not good enough for that, and choices will have to be made about what to keep from the scene and how to represent it. If you shoot JPEG those choices have been made by the camera manufacturer, while raw lets you make the choices. Generally speaking, I would say that the camera brands are not interested in capturing the absolute truth, but more in capturing a pleasing rendition of the truth (since that is what sells the most cameras).

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