ACR 3.4 - Am I missing something?

[jwkramer]

I've been playing around with Adobe CS2, and ACR 3.4 and it seems to me that Adobe missed the boat somewhat with regards to the 30D controls. I can't find access to the "Picture Style" controls in the interface anywhere. It looks like basically the same old controls that were there before (for all the other camera models). While I was experimenting, I found that Breeze Browser allows access to these controls in their interface, so I know it's just a matter of accessing them.

For me, I find that shooting all images in RAW and then playing around with the "Picture Style" in post processing is a much preferred method to picking one before shooting. Why lock yourself into shooting a scene in B&W with a red filter (for example) at the time of capture when it's just as easy to see what the image would look like if you would have shot it that way during post processing instead. It's almost like being able to shoot with multiple "films" at the same time.

If I'm missing something, please enlighten me...

[EOSAddict]

I don't think adobe has picture styles for the 5D either. I assume its 'proprietary' Canon stuff only accessible thru DPP.

[jwkramer]

it can't be too proprietary... Breeze Browser figured out how to do it. The only thing with Breeze Browser is that if you choose to edit the image instead of convert it, it uses the ACR to convert the RAW image instead of the built in tools in Breeze Browser. I can't help but think this is more of a case of laziness on the part of Adobe. It was probably a lot easier to just add a couple of new models to ACR than actually write new code... <roll eyes>

[Lester Wareham]

All the picture styles must be are settings for saturation and contrast, perhaps via curves. So it would be fairly easy to setup ACR templates for those if you knew the settings, the settings I guess are Canon proprietry but perhaps the Breeze Browser folk reverse engineered it. I guess the easy way to do that would be to look at the settings DPP uses for the various styles.

[jwkramer]

perhaps. It makes the interface very user friendly - check it out:

http://www.jim-kramer.com/photos/BB-IF.jpg

I guess the proof would be to let the camera shoot a few in different styles, and then compare that to what you get in post processing using the "reverse engineered" versions in BB.

[PacAce]

Originally Posted by jwkramer

it can't be too proprietary... Breeze Browser figured out how to do it. The only thing with Breeze Browser is that if you choose to edit the image instead of convert it, it uses the ACR to convert the RAW image instead of the built in tools in Breeze Browser. I can't help but think this is more of a case of laziness on the part of Adobe. It was probably a lot easier to just add a couple of new models to ACR than actually write new code... <roll eyes>

The picture style is just a setting in the EXIF info which tells the Canon raw converter what defaults to use when initially converting the raw image. And, of course, you can change the setting from what you initially had the camera set to.

Third party raw converter programs that use their own algorithm for converting the raw image know nothing about the Canon picture styles and just ignore it.

There are, however, third party raw converter programs that make use of Canon's raw converter API (application programming interfaces) to convert the raw image. And Breeze Browser is one of those companies that also use the Canon APIs. That's the reason they can also process picture styles.

[gkas]

Originally Posted by jwkramer

it can't be too proprietary... Breeze Browser figured out how to do it.

BreezeBrowser knows how to use it because Breezebrowser uses the Canon SDK (Software Development Kit) to reproduce all of the functions. ACR is proprietary software that replicates the functions, some of which it has chosen not to replicate.