ACR or DPP for CR2

[neilwood32]

Ive just got my hands on CS2 (£46.00 on EBAY :D) after using Paintshop Pro X2 for a few months. First impressions are that its VERY impressive!( impressive enough that i might pay to convert it to CS3 for £163.00 - making it CS3 for £209 instead of £549.00:lol:)

Just wondering what people do with their RAW files?

Do you download of the camera and then take them to DPP to convert them? If so do you convert to TIFF or JPEG?

Or do you use ACR within photoshop and make the conversion?

[sapearl]

Hi Neil - I've been a CS2/CS3 user for about two years now and have been using ACR.

For a short time I did use Canon's DPP... it was ok, and a lot of folks do like it. But for some reason ACR seemed to have more of the features and layout that I like to work with (resonates with my old darkroom days) so I've stuck with it. Most of my work is wedding, social event, and then a lot of urban landscape:

http://www.pbase.com/sapearl/cleveland_flats

Here's my basic workflow after doing a wedding or some other large shoot:
I transfer all the files to the PC using a small inexpensive USB connected Sandisk card reader. These go straight to a separate 250GB scratch drive. I use ACR for the RAW file transfer.

For a wedding, I will first adjust WB, again with ACR's eyedropper tool, and batch apply the WB color temp to similar groups of photos. Then there is general global exposure adjustment, brightness/shadow tweaking, and finally perhaps some highlight recovery or shadow fill. Note the these last two are new with CS3. I think they are fantastic additions Neil. I've been able to nicely recover some blown pixels that would have previously been more difficult.

Once I've made ALL of these "global" adjustments, I will make sure the files are in the proper client viewing order, rename them to some sort of logical/sequential file name convention, and then start the JPG conversion process using PS. I will typically use Quality Level 10 which will give me files 2.5 to about 4.5MB in size.... roughly.

Everything gets backed up to another hard drive, as well as burned to two sets of DVD's for safe keeping. Hope this helps Neil - let me know if you have any more questions.... glad to help :D. - Stu

[cfcRebel]

Like Stu, i too use ACR to convert my RAWs to PSD and process them further in Photoshop. I have DPP too and nothing is wrong with it. It's just me trying to keep my workflow as simple and straight forward as possible.

[René Damkot]

Either 100% LR or DPP > CS2 here.

[davidcrebelxt]

may come down to which default rendering you prefer weighed against tools in each program.

For me, I'm a "reluctant" LR user currently... I much prefer the default rendering in DPP (colors are better, whereas ACR shifts my colors to ugly; meaning I'm quickly into adjust image to my liking in DPP) yet I prefer the tools and capabilities of LR. So currently I have a few calibration presets that help to somewhat counteract the ugly that ACR gives me, yet I still long for the better color of DPP... hopefully ACR will have some improvements in the near future to give me better default rendering

[sapearl]

Interesting.... when you say "ugly" what exactly is ACR doing?

I print both at home on an Epson R1800 and also send to a commercial lab for my wedding and event work. Are you using sRGB or aRGB for your defaults in ACR? I can't say that I've had your experience.

may come down to which default rendering you prefer weighed against tools in each program.

For me, I'm a "reluctant" LR user currently... I much prefer the default rendering in DPP (colors are better, whereas ACR shifts my colors to ugly; meaning I'm quickly into adjust image to my liking in DPP) yet I prefer the tools and capabilities of LR. So currently I have a few calibration presets that help to somewhat counteract the ugly that ACR gives me, yet I still long for the better color of DPP... hopefully ACR will have some improvements in the near future to give me better default rendering