Canon Digital Photo Professional vs Adobe Camera raw

Hallo,

when I convert the same raw file by using Digital Photo Professional and Adobe Camera Raw I obtain two quite different results, even if I start the conversion with the default settings. Have a look at the 100% picture. On the left is Camera Raw, on the right is DPP.
Camera Raw looks more noisy.

Do you know why is so different? Thanks

Without going into the specifics of the images above, DPP applies the picture style settings that were in your camera as a starting point. ACR cannot access all of that information so it starts you at a more neutral starting point. But more to the point you are using too different tools, applying different amounts of correction before the conversion and thus its entirely likely that you will have differences. If I had to guess the one on the left appears to have had some extra sharpening, and the perhaps the one on the right might have some noise reduction added. But without watching your exact workflow its just a guess.

What's your default noise reduction set ti in ARC? DPP? I'm guessing that they are different. I have mine set to zero in ARC and all the raws look like this until I apply NR. I prefer the zero setting as this allows me to set the level as needed per picture.

Thanks for your answer. I don't have any style set in my camera and in DPP and Camera Raw I use the default settings (I don't move any slider). Basically my workflow is the straightest imaginable.

I'm sure that Canon software by default will apply quite high noise reduction. I believe this is what you are seeing.

davikokar wrote in post #16566563
Thanks for your answer. I don't have any style set in my camera and in DPP and Camera Raw I use the default settings (I don't move any slider). Basically my workflow is the straightest imaginable.

You have some picture style set in your camera, even a neutral setting is still a setting.

No, especially if you start with defaults.

That is impossible unless it is a 350D, 20D or older - from before the introduction of Picture Styles - and even for those oldies DPP creates a Picture Style.

When designing DPP Canon decided that they would by default apply settings that would result in a conversion identical to that achived by the in camera JPEG processing. This is possible as Canon's software is able to both read the in camera settings and then know how that should translate to the finished image. This may be a good thing for those who want an easy route to a finished image, and that is what Canon think consumers want.

Adobe though make products for professional image makers. They assume that you the artist know both the result you want, and the tools you are going to use to achive that result. Because of that the default settings in Adobe ACR are very conservative, you are EXPECTED to routenly change them for most images. Now for many the changes are very often going to be very similar each time. So Adobe make it very easy for you set new defaults. You can even have new defaults for each different camera that vary depending on the ISO used for the shot. They also make it very easy to make (or aquire from many sources) presets that will apply frequently used processing settings. This additonal power that you get from using Adobes RAW processing system comes at the price of having to use a bit more effort to get a result. Usually that result can be a better image than you would get from DPP. Personally I think that the latest RAW process version is much better than Canon's. It is much better at dealing with highlight detail that would be just burnt out in DPP.

Alan

BigAl007 wrote in post #16566977
When designing DPP Canon decided that they would by default apply settings that would result in a conversion identical to that achived by the in camera JPEG processing. This is possible as Canon's software is able to both read the in camera settings and then know how that should translate to the finished image. This may be a good thing for those who want an easy route to a finished image, and that is what Canon think consumers want.

Adobe though make products for professional image makers. They assume that you the artist know both the result you want, and the tools you are going to use to achive that result. Because of that the default settings in Adobe ACR are very conservative, you are EXPECTED to routenly change them for most images. Now for many the changes are very often going to be very similar each time. So Adobe make it very easy for you set new defaults. You can even have new defaults for each different camera that vary depending on the ISO used for the shot. They also make it very easy to make (or aquire from many sources) presets that will apply frequently used processing settings. This additonal power that you get from using Adobes RAW processing system comes at the price of having to use a bit more effort to get a result. Usually that result can be a better image than you would get from DPP. Personally I think that the latest RAW process version is much better than Canon's. It is much better at dealing with highlight detail that would be just burnt out in DPP.

Alan

I'm sorry, I don't think it's anywhere near as complicated as you are making out. There is no Lex Luthor plan by Canon to keep things simple nor from Adobe to make it complicated. Canon simply reads the settings used to take the shot and use them as a default. Everything is still changeable just as with ARC. Adobe has it's own internal defaults which are also changeable and they use very few from the image taken. This whole pro/amateur thing is just not there.

Yes and no. Probably Alan should have written "advanced" instead of "professional" because there are plenty of photographers that will invest a lot of time, effort and money into getting the best image they can and are doing it for love, not profit. But, on the other hand, it is also true that any successful seller must know his market and I think Canon and Abode have very different evaluations of what their customers want. You are not new to Canon, JJ. Do you remember what SOOC jpgs from the 10D, 20D, 300D and 350D looked like? Pretty much like today's Neutral Picture Style, because their initial thinking was that anybody advanced enough to buy a DSLR would be advanced enough to do some computer enhancements. And then their market research people told them that they were losing sales to Nikon because Nikon jpgs simply looked better - sharper, brighter, contrastier, more saturated. So Canon fought back by putting Picture Styles into the firmware. And what is more, they made Standard P.S. the default. I remember that when the first version of DPP with Picture Styles was released a few weeks later, the manual said that by shooting RAW in the older cameras you could apply the new P.S.s in DPP or if you wanted to continue getting your previous output you should set DPP to Neutral. The revolution in Canon's thinking wasn't in including the P.S.s in the camera, even in the older models you could change the shooting parameters, sharpness, contrast, etc. It was in their making Standard, the jazzed up P.S., the default. Because that is what (in their view) the people want. That would sell more cameras. And in my opinion they were right, judging by the number of cries of "Why is LR (or ACR) ruining my pictures?" I am convinced that any survey would show that a far higher percentage of DPP users than LR users make minimal or no changes from the default before converting. After all, why mess with something that already looks great? And I would like to believe that a large number of LR users are like me; even if the Auto button gave a superb rendering of the image I would still muck it around for another 15 minutes. And somewhere deep inside I secretly believe Adobe had me in mind when they designed the product.

I understand what you are saying and I also remember when the defaults were much less saturated than today. However, just because DPP starts with camera defaults as the default doesn't mean that it is in any way less professional. It just smack of those that denigrate Rebel users as amateurs just because of the size of their camera. DPP is a full featured raw converter maybe not quite with the feature set as arc but it converts as well and in some cases better than arc.

Check your preferences in DPP. Set the default noise reduction to "0"
If you set it to "apply camera settings", DPP might apply quite a bit of NR, depending on in camera setting. Also: there used to be a bug that caused DPP to apply NR if set to "apply camera settings", even if in camera NR was set to 0.
No idea if that's fixed or not, since I never apply (luminance) NR in DPP: It sucks.

davikokar wrote in post #16566528
Hallo,

when I convert the same raw file by using Digital Photo Professional and Adobe Camera Raw I obtain two quite different results, even if I start the conversion with the default settings. Have a look at the 100% picture. On the left is Camera Raw, on the right is DPP.
Camera Raw looks more noisy.

Do you know why is so different? Thanks

Funny, I had exactly the same grainy effect from LR trial version, that you have here with ACR. That was after applying some light noise reduction on very noisy photos.

René Damkot wrote in post #16587596
Check your preferences in DPP. Set the default noise reduction to "0"
If you set it to "apply camera settings", DPP might apply quite a bit of NR, depending on in camera setting. Also: there used to be a bug that caused DPP to apply NR if set to "apply camera settings", even if in camera NR was set to 0.
No idea if that's fixed or not, since I never apply (luminance) NR in DPP: It sucks.
..

I also noticed that DPP sometimes chose different values for NR, even if I don't change any settings in the camera.

Refill wrote in post #16587719
Funny, I had exactly the same grainy effect from LR trial version, that you have here with ACR.

Not too surprising: LR and ACR use the same engine.

Refill wrote in post #16587719
I also noticed that DPP sometimes chose different values for NR, even if I don't change any settings in the camera.

Might be ISO or Picture Style-specific, dunno. Never tried that (since I don't like that kind of surprises).

Refill wrote in post #16587719
Funny, I had exactly the same grainy effect from LR trial version, that you have here with ACR. That was after applying some light noise reduction on very noisy photos.

To make a fair comparison, turn off all sharpening as well as all NR - sharpening will affect the appearance of the noise. The above comparison looks fairly similar in tone and color.

kirk