Re: Canon Editor De Fotos
Joao Charlesbois
If you're like many photographers, the first thing you do upon taking a brand-new camera out of its package is to set aside the included software download info (or, with older cameras, the CD or DVD), opting instead for a third-party option like Adobe's Camera Raw or Lightroom. But is that a smart move in our newly-normal, more cost-conscious world, or could you get by just as well with your camera's bundled software?
That's a question we've wanted to answer for a while now, and one which I'll discuss in a new series of articles comparing the user interfaces, performance and image quality of the manufacturer's apps with those of their much-vaunted Adobe rival. In the interests of keeping things to a readable length, I'm limiting myself only to image editing, and won't address features like image management, tethering or printing.
In this article, I'm comparing Adobe Camera Raw 12.4 alongside Adobe Bridge 10.1.1 versus Canon Digital Photo Professional 4.12.60.0, all of which are their current versions. My computer is a 2018-vintage Dell XPS 15 9570 laptop running Windows 10 version 1909.
To ensure neither Adobe nor Canon had any advantage out of the gate, I've aimed to reproduce, as closely as possible, the look of already-processed images from our galleries, without any prior knowledge as to the recipes behind them. I've chosen images from the EOS R for use in this comparison, for reasons we'll come to in a moment.
To avoid getting too far into the weeds, sharpness and noise reduction were left at their defaults, while lens corrections were enabled for both apps with the exception of distortion correction, so as to make for easier comparison to our reference shots from the gallery.
Of course, the most immediately obvious differences between ACR and DPP are their camera support and pricetag. You already paid for DPP when you bought your Canon DSLR, so it's effectively free. While it only supports Raws shot by the company's own cameras, you can expect full Raw support for almost every Canon camera to be available more or less immediately upon release.
Overall, DPP's user interface feels more dated than that of ACR, and occasionally more obtuse and frustrating. Both applications support modern features like 4K displays, touch-screens and pen control, although I did notice a few minor glitches in DPP's 4K support.
But where Adobe's controls are grouped together in clearly-named, collapsible sections within a single panel, DPP's span no less than nine different tabs, each identified only by a small icon. And many of DPP's sliders for contrast, tone, saturation etc. jump in large steps, unlike ACR's which move smoothly and precisely when dragged. For finer-grained adjustments, you must either type in values directly or click tiny arrow buttons.
And the locations of DPP's controls aren't always logical, nor are their names always intuitive. For example, even if you've tweaked multiple images at once, the large Save button at the top of the screen won't process them together. Instead, you have to find a Batch Process command hidden within the File menu.
When you move sliders in ACR, the preview image updates in real time to show your change before you've even released the mouse button, even when using a 4K display. But DPP's previews frequently take anywhere from a couple of seconds to 10 seconds or more to update after releasing the mouse button. Worse still, the preview often updates in multiple passes, initially showing results that, misleadingly, differ significantly from the final pass.
The settings chosen for a given image do impact on performance somewhat, but they don't come close to explaining DPP's modest performance. Even with all six images reverted to out-of-camera settings and with all lens corrections disabled, DPP still needed 81 seconds to complete its work.
Although most of their basic controls are broadly similar, ACR offers a few extra tools that DPP lacks. Both applications give you a one-click auto control to get basic settings in the ballpark, plus slider control over brightness, contrast, shadows, highlights, saturation and tone. But ACR adds sliders for vibrance, texture, clarity, dehazing and blacks/whites.
I particularly missed these last two, and while DPP's dynamic range control helps make up for their absence, I found it less intuitive to use. Even with it, I had to resort to finely tweaking curves to try to hold onto the brightest highlights and deepest shadows, using the keyboard arrows to more finely position the points than I could with a mouse or touchpad.
ACR's one-click auto control tended to hold onto highlights and open up shadows much better than did DPP. But in return, Canon's auto control yielded more realistic colors, although it sometimes felt too muted in foliage. Adobe's results, meanwhile, tended decidedly towards the contrasty and garish, especially in foliage and skin tones.
At default settings, DPP tended to control noise a little better than did ACR, although that advantage came at the expense of the finest image detail. In fact, even with its noise reduction sliders zeroed out completely, DPP showed similarly low levels of noise to ACR with both luminance / color noise reduction sliders set at around level 25-30.
But you really have to pixel-peep to notice these subtle differences. The effects of lens correction were much more noticeable, and both applications did a great job of automatically taming lens defects like chromatic aberration and vignetting.
Overall, I felt that neither ACR or DPP had a huge edge over the other in terms of basic editing. However, I found ACR quite a bit easier to work with, and spent several times as long working to get similarly-pleasing results from DPP.
Although it's capable of images just as good as those from ACR with a little effort, I personally found DPP's interface and performance issues quite off-putting. If you're on a shoestring budget, it could make sense as an alternative to paying the Adobe tax every month, freeing up cash for other gear at the expense of some convenience. But if you can afford it, I recommend spending the extra on Camera Raw for a much faster, more intuitive editing experience.
Editor's note: We're aiming to have more of these comparisons between manufacturer software and third-party alternatives in the coming weeks. Either through our feedback form or in the comments below, let us know what you want to see us test to make these articles more valuable for you. Thanks!
Heard no mention of this. DPP is what I use. Some times auto gamma button blows out whites and blocks blacks. If you right click on the photo while on the edit page you can select highlight/shadow warnings. If they are way off reset the auto gamma button and use highlight and shadow sliders to take warning colors to minimums. Perfect exposure every time, if it was close to right in camera. I thought the DPP in this review looked too dark in the shadows compared to ACR. Much darker by comparisons than I have seen in other reviews that I've watched. I don't think the reviewer really understands how to use DPP to its best potential.
ACR images look rather cheap and youtubeish, it is so popular look among amateurs, I almost instantly see photos (over)processed using ACR everywhere. I don't see any reason to use it.
DPP gives so much better color! Also DPP is more contrast/brightness wise.
Anyway don't spread this around :D
The reviewers seemed to have missed one of the most powerful features of DPP. The DPP diffraction correction algorithms retain sharp details which would otherwise be lost due to diffraction with high f stops. This is very important to me since I often shoot at f/20 to maximize depth of field for macro photography.
My experience with noise reduction at high ISOs is different than the review. I found DPP to provide powerful noise reduction while maintaining details and without even the need to tinker with default settings.
You probably found Adobe easier to work with because you've been working with Adobe products on a near daily basis for decades? You probably found DPP less easy to work with because you haven't used it more than for a few hours every few years when you write an article such as this?
It's just like Sony or Nikon shooters who try the other side's cameras and can't find anything in the menus. If you're used to Nikon, Sony menus make no sense. If you're used to Sony, Nikon menus only make a little bit of sense.
1. In every photo, the DPP result is darker than the ACR result, but I saw no discussion of this in the article. If your goal was to match the look of already-processed images from your galleries why did you leave the DPP photos darker? Does DPP give darker results by default?
3. I was disappointed that there was no comparison of how they handled noise, except for one sentence but no photos where we could really see the difference. It would have been interesting to see how they each handled noise in very dark conditions and high ISO, and when brightening shadows.
I've used Ps for 0ver 20 years, and DPP regularly since version 4. It does the best job of removing CA - though so does the latest version of Topaz Studio. I process the RAW file n DPP and then send to Ps CS6. Speed is not an issue for me.
Whenever I see the comment 'dated interface' I immediately think that it means 'better interface'. For example, the interface of Photoshop CS2, with its traditional menu system, is in my opinion far superior to the later versions. And it's valid for every piece of software that I know.
Unless you take 2000 pictures shooting weddings every week why would you want to pay all this money for Lightroom and Photoshop? The Canon software records exposures exactly the way they came from the camera and the colours are definitely better. It does the job just fine.
But this leads you to explore the wrong question--namely, whether DPP can "substitute" for ACR. That's something DPP was never designed to do. Rather: DPP's 100% faithful interpretation of in-camera settings situate it uniquely well to support and reinforce a "get it (nearly) right at the shoot" approach to photography.
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