S90 barrel distortion

[tmwag]

Anyone think there's a chance Canon will have a firmware update to correct the barrel distortion on the S90. I like the size of the camera and supplied DPP will correct it but I'd prefer to keep using PSE7 because that's what I'm use to

[Jon]

Barrel distortion is a property of the lens. The Canon solution to that is post-processing of the JPEG in camera or by using RAW and DPP. RAW, by definition, is a straight dump of the sensor data. It's up to Adobe to support distortion correction in PSE7.

[dave_bass5]

Can you post a pic of what you mean and elaborate a bit more.
I find the question a bit confusing.
The camera does correct for it if shooting JPG and like you say, DPP does as well. Are you saying you want firmware to correct it in RAW in camera?

Cheers.

[tmwag]

It's well known that the S90 has very bad barrel distortion at 28mm when shooting raw. My question was if firmware could correct the problem. Jon already answered my question

[dave_bass5]

It's well known that the S90 has very bad barrel distortion at 28mm when shooting raw. My question was if firmware could correct the problem. Jon already answered my question

What i was confused about is you asking for Firmware to correct the distortion when the camera already has FW that does this in JPG, and doing it in RAW would defeat the puropse of shooting RAW so i didnt think you meant that.

Doesnt PSE have lens correction in it? Not in ACR but in the filters menu like PSCS does?

[tmwag]

Doesnt PSE have lens correction in it? Not in ACR but in the filters menu like PSCS does?

I shoot raw almost exclusively and never had to deal with camera distortions before when using my old G9. Just did a quick check in PSE7 and I do see a filter that may address barrel distortion. Thanks for the suggestion

[dave_bass5]

I very rarely use PSCS4 as i find LR does everything i need but for things like distortion i find the Adobe Lens correction works ok.
I knew it was in PSE 8 but ive not used PSE7 for ages.
It does seem like Adobe are aware of the distortion and have updated ACR and LR recently to cope with this problem from the S90 but i dont think that helps with PSE7.

[tmwag]

I guess my choices at this point are..Keep the S90 and buy LR or learn DPP, wait for Adobe to provide an updated plug in for PSE7, or just return the S90 and exchange it for a G11 (no distortions), which worked fine with PSE7 and ACR 5.5 during my brief experiance with it. Should have just kept the G9:rolleyes:

[Dick Emery]

G11 will have distortions just to a lesser degree. Same applies when shooting RAW vs JPG. JPG will be corrected in the camera. RAW will not. G11 will also need the same updates in software on your computer.

On a different note. Sometimes I wish to keep the barrel distortion on a RAW to avoid things being cropped or for effect. I noticed after installing Lightroom 2.6 pre I don't have any means of retaining the distortion and Photoshop does not import the new CR2 format for the S90 directly. Going from DPP to Photoshop is not good either as it applies the correction.

Any idea how to import the untouched RAW now?

EDIT: Nevermind I figured it out. Use ACR 5.5 for Photoshop and Lightroom for correct import.

[Player9]

I guess my choices at this point are..Keep the S90 and buy LR or learn DPP, wait for Adobe to provide an updated plug in for PSE7, or just return the S90 and exchange it for a G11 (no distortions), which worked fine with PSE7 and ACR 5.5 during my brief experiance with it. Should have just kept the G9:rolleyes:


I think you're making this into a bigger dilemma than it is. Just use DPP, which is going to correct the distortion for you with one click. As an added bonus, you will also get a better overall RAW conversion than what you could get from ACR or LR. My $.02.

[Jon]

I don't use LR, PSE or PS CS. I use DPP for my conversions, and PSP for any touch-ups that may be necessary. Really, DPP is extremely powerful, versatile, and easy to use. You can batch process your photos if you want, too. I did 50+ shots from a mix of 5D, 20D, 1D3, A80 and A630 yesterday on an old, slow (1 GHz & 1 GB RAM) sub-notebook where the originals were on a USB flash drive. It took me an interrupted 40 min. (including individual crops) to get them all set and the machine a further 30 to process them all (while I was fiddling with other stuff).

[Tee Why]

I don't think LR has barrel distortion correction.
If you don't want to shoot jpeg or use DPP, I think the best workflow maybe to use PSE's ACR to convert the RAW to JPEG/Tiff format and use the camera correction filter to correct the barrel distortion then.

Good luck.

[Dick Emery]

Lightroom does have barrel distortion and colour correction for the S90 in version 2.6 pre-release. Works well.

[SteveLS]

Just use DPP, ....... As an added bonus, you will also get a better overall RAW conversion than what you could get from ACR or LR. My $.02.

I've heard this before several times.
I've only used ACR but needed to used DPP when I bought my S90 because it isn't supported in PS_CS3.
DPP seems pretty basic compared to ACR.
Why would you get better results from it?
Steve

[dave_bass5]

I've heard this before several times.
I've only used ACR but needed to used DPP when I bought my S90 because it isn't supported in PS_CS3.
DPP seems pretty basic compared to ACR.
Why would you get better results from it?
Steve
In my opinon the colours and maybe noise reduction are slightly better in DPP that LR2 BUT LR2 gives you so much more control over the RAW image that you can get a much better output as long as its not just very basic corrections you are looking for.
As DPP cant even straighten an image, for me a wonky jpeg isnt what im looking for, good colour or not.
Plus LR2 has local correction so you can work on small parts of the image, it has red eye correction as well.
All things i use quite often and just my opinion.

[SteveLS]

That's the way I see it too.
For me the most used tools are Recovery, Exposure, and Temperature probably in that order.
I'm really not familiar with DPP but it doesn't seem to have an Recovery or Exposure equivalent.
It has Brightness Adjustment but so does ACR.
Thanks for the reply
Steve

[ekphrasis]

I just got my s90 and I'm loving it. I'm learning about shooting in Raw, using DPP (that came bundled with the camera, tho I upgraded to v. 3.8 off the canon website).

I have a question about the lens distortion correciton in Raw, however. I've read a number of reviews where the photographer talks about the need to run lens distortion correciton on the raw file. It isn't clear to me, however, if DPP automatically does this to my raw pictures, because when I look under the "lens" tab by default the "correction" is not turned on. If I don't check this box and slide the bar does the raw image go uncorrected? If I do need to check the box, how far do I slide the slider? Is the standard just to do "100" percent?

I was also confused because I read that DPP now supports the s90, but in the PDF manuel for DPP (v 3.8) the s90 is not on the list of supported lenses in the lens correction section. Could someone help me to understand this?

thanks--your advice is much appreciated!

[dave_bass5]

I just got my s90 and I'm loving it. I'm learning about shooting in Raw, using DPP (that came bundled with the camera, tho I upgraded to v. 3.8 off the canon website).

I have a question about the lens distortion correciton in Raw, however. I've read a number of reviews where the photographer talks about the need to run lens distortion correciton on the raw file. It isn't clear to me, however, if DPP automatically does this to my raw pictures, because when I look under the "lens" tab by default the "correction" is not turned on. If I don't check this box and slide the bar does the raw image go uncorrected? If I do need to check the box, how far do I slide the slider? Is the standard just to do "100" percent?

I was also confused because I read that DPP now supports the s90, but in the PDF manuel for DPP (v 3.8) the s90 is not on the list of supported lenses in the lens correction section. Could someone help me to understand this?

thanks--your advice is much appreciated!

The reviews you mention are probably old reviews, done before most of the big Raw converters supported the S90.
These days DPP/ACR/LR etc do an auto correction on the raw file as soon as you open it. Its the same as the jpgs get in camera. You cant turn it on or off and there are no settings for it.
There is quite a bit of barrel distortion at the wider end of the zoom range but its not something you see as its corrected in camera for jpgs, and what you see on the LCD is a thumbnail created from the in camera jpg if that makes sense.
The Lens correction tab your seeing in DPP is something else and not what the reviewers are talking about. It does work with the S90 but most of the correction has already been applied so its only a minimal correction.
Also the S90 wont be on the lens correction list as its lens is built in.

[ekphrasis]

thanks dave, that's the information that I was looking for. I was getting the feeling that the correction was applied automatically because I wasn't really seeing any distortion in the raw files I opened in DPP. It does make me wonder how the various reviews that I read online that showed the distortion in the s90 got the raw file to display un-corrected. but that's not really something I need to do, just curious.

the second thing I'm not fully clear on about raw, in DPP is whether the changes I make to the raw image get permanently overwritten into the original raw file, or whether I'm always able to revert back to the original. Is the raw, in a sense, write protected and the modifications that I make to the "recipe" merely added to the original recipe, or can I permanently overwrite the original if I'm not careful?

I know this is straying from the topic of the thread...

[Snydremark]

PTlens is a terrific little addon for dealing with several different types of distortion.

[Jon]

Changes you make to a RAW file do not affect the original file; you can always revert to the original "as shot" data. They only become a permanent part of files converted to JPEG or TIFF.

[dave_bass5]

the second thing I'm not fully clear on about raw, in DPP is whether the changes I make to the raw image get permanently overwritten into the original raw file, or whether I'm always able to revert back to the original. Is the raw, in a sense, write protected and the modifications that I make to the "recipe" merely added to the original recipe, or can I permanently overwrite the original if I'm not careful?


Im not too sure about this.
In DPP it does (or can) write the new adjustments to the Raw file i believe. Now, while you can always adjust the setting (its still a Raw file after all) i dont know if you can go back to the original settings automatically.

I could be wrong and im sure someone will point this out if i am.