post processing canon DPP

I'm fairly new on post processing.
I have gone from a T3i to a 60D to a 5D markII in camera over the year.
And I'm not fully satisfied with my MarkII yet.

So I was wondering if I might do something wrong in processing.
I'm using the DPP to open my raw files and change em to jpeg, since
the MarkII is known for better raw images than jpegs.
And I also use the few features such as sharpness and such, but
when I used iPhoto on my Mac, I get a better result than DPP.

So can someone tell give me a few tips, cause so far, I'm not totally
happy with my pics.

Should I use Lightroom????

Can you post some examples showing us what is better out of iPhoto as compared to DPP?

Y ou need to play with DPP more, its a very useful piece of software but only does what the user asks it to.

My only issue with it tends to be the sharpening. I use a third-party sharpener via Photoshop which I think does a far better job.

As Albert Nam says, show us what your problem(s) is/are and we may be able to guide you.

I truly do not intend to sound harsh, but rather just honest and forthright in hopes you will refocus your situation correctly.

I do not need to see samples. If you have gone thru that many cameras and you have not been satisfied with any of your images, the issue is not the cameras or the processing app. I still sell old fine art images taken with a 20D and a 30D, all processed with DPP.

Perhaps you should post some samples, but not framed in a "what's wrong with my camera or my post processer" framework, but rather in a "how can I improve my images" context. It could be composition, could be exposure, could be processing... could be one or more things. But it's not the cameras nor the capabilities of the processor. Logic would dictate that because others using the same produce good results. Hope the honesty helps. Good luck.

DPP and the camera's processor are, when DPP is at default settings, virtually identical. So the jpgs are no better and no worse. Every camera is known for better Raws than jpgs, but only because the Raws can be better platforms upon which to build improved versions than the "mass produced" jpgs.
If you are disatisfied with DPP at its default settings, you will be far more disatisfied with LR (at least initially) because DPP does a lot of default editing and LR requires much more user input and this, of course, means more learning and experience.

well maybe it's just me but tweaking in iPhoto does a nice job, DPP is mostly to recover a file from Raw and process it to a limit, but when I transform it to jpeg and work it again in iPhoto it does help.
I changed the camera often in one year mainly because I do shoot, and love to have a better camera for versatility, but I liked the 60D.....no problem there, it's just that shooting with the markII is different in a few field, first my Tokina wide angle is useless cause it's a DX and doesn't work properly.
Second I get one good picture out of many compared to my 60D, with has to do with me, or the focus and autofocus , a lot of people complained about it.

One thing i'd like to know, some people has the same camera, but hey I'm sure they post process like crazy, cause there is a huge difference in the overall quality.....mainly in sharpness.

I'm using a 24-105 and Tokina 11-16

I forgot something, why is my pics sometimes so soft, and when I use post processing I get a better IQ.
I know it could sound stupid, but why can it be a sharp image from the start....
Sometimes I get sharp and a lot of tomes not really, specially when I shoot where there is difference in grass color and a lot of sun , lets say noon to 3in the afternoon

I don't have a Mac, and I don't have a 5D2, so I can't make informed comments about iPhoto or issues you may be having with the 5D2.

But I can make some general observations.

For instance, from what you describe, the fact that you get "better results" from tweaking your 5D2 files in iPhoto than you do in DPP, it actually sounds like your issue is with your processing software rather than with your camera.

For instance, when you talk about a "sharp image": there are two fundamental "meanings" that people use when they refer to "sharp". The first is "technical sharpness", meaning how the camera captures fine detail (using proper technique) and then how those details are "rendered", either in the camera when producing a jpeg or in your Raw processor. You view those details at 100% and can "tweak" your sharpening settings in your Raw processor to get good "capture"/"input" sharpening.

The other way people refer to sharpening is a "look", what people often refer to as "pop", of an image. This is actually more properly the result of Contrast and Saturation (along with Sharpening) that can be applied by your camera to produce a jpeg, or in your software, either to the jpeg or to the Raw file.

I suspect that it is that latest meaning of "Sharp" that you are referring to. In other words, it has less to do with your camera and rather has to do with your software and how you use it, which would explain why you see different results in iPhoto compared to DPP.

The thing is that you actually should be able to get significantly better results from DPP compared to the "generic" iPhoto. For one thing, the Canon software is "engineered" for the Canon Raw files/Raw data. For another thing, Canon has provided features and tools designed for their cameras.

But, it's up to you to learn to work with those tools!

For starters, I'd take time to play with your Picture Styles in your Raw tab. Different Picture Styles will have different default settings for your Contrast, Saturation and Sharpening as well. So, changing to different Pictures can make a significant different to the "look" of your images. Try it! For example, change to, say, the Neutral Picture Style, then to the Landscape Picture Style and check out the difference.

And then, that's just the "starting point". Note that in your Raw tab, for each Picture Style there are controls for Contrast, Saturation and Sharpening that you can play with to "optimize" those settings.

And then, you mention the results you get from bright, sunny, mid-day shots. Well, honestly, it's well-known that those are not optimal conditions for a lot of photography. And, in general, cameras struglle with scenes with bright light and shadows.

This is well known, and it should be noted that this is one of the strengths of shooting Raw, maybe you could consider it the "main" strength, at least I do, aside from the idea of "fixing" exposure problems and White Balance in your Raw processor.

So, DPP has the Hightlights and Shadows tools in the Raw tab which help you to recover those areas. It's something to work with. How to best/effectively work with those tools of course will depend on the scene and how you choose to expose it -- you may "push" your exposure "To The Right" so that you may actually want to pull your overall brightness back and then push up the shadows to compensate and the Highlights slider could get more "mileage" with your highlights. Or, you may decide to "expose for the highlights" which results in darker shadows, where in post-processing you'd need more emphasis in Shadow recover, maybe even needing to increase the overall Brightness and then really cranking down the Highlights slider and cranking up the Shadows slider.

Of course DPP has other tools, like the curves in both the Raw tab and the RGB tab that give you other ways of "playing" with your image. These are things to learn about as you go!

Well, anyway, those are my general thoughts!

The one thing I find odd in the OP's workflow is that he says he does some apparently minor editing in DPP, then converts to jpeg to finish. I find this to be a bit strange. I don't know if he's aware of it, but when he converts to jpeg, he is discarding a significant portion of the information which his camera captured in the RAW file. It may seem better because DPP has applied his in camera settings and edits to that point, and has done the compression to make a nicely viewable image, but in the process, he has lost a huge chunk of data. Then he does further editing to the jpeg, then saves it again, further compressing the data. Every time he resaves the jpeg, the image is compressed, making a smaller and smaller file, and losing image data in the process. He didn't say whether he's saving the RAW or not.

I think he needs to learn a bit more about post processing and workflow, as he himself says in his first post. I do almost 100% of my editing on the RAW file in Lightroom, only converting to jpeg when exporting to it's viewing or printing destination. What little editing I don't do in LR is done in Elements, and that is only for those times when I need to do some layer or mask editing. The better I learn Lightroom the less I find I need Elements. Even in Elements I'm working on a .psd, which is just the Adobe version of tiff - never a jpeg if I have any choice. The only jpegs I edit are some old photos taken with a P&S and a few hundred scanned in transparencies which I took 30-40 years ago. Lightroom actually handles those old slides amazingly well, but I'd still rather have them as RAW.

Albert Nam wrote in post #14747854
Can you post some examples showing us what is better out of iPhoto as compared to DPP?

^^^ This.
Maybe also post (a link to) the CR2 file for people to edit.