the use of Canon DDP

Apart from converting the RAW image to a JPEG (in my case a TIFF 16 bit) file should I pre process the raw files in DDP such as Noise Reduction and sharpening or wait until I use another Post Processing Program such as CS3 or Elements?

bond007 wrote in post #5851959
Apart from converting the RAW image to a JPEG (in my case a TIFF 16 bit) file should I pre process the raw files in DDP such as Noise Reduction and sharpening or wait until I use another Post Processing Program such as CS3 or Elements?

Every Photoshop guru using CS3 says that NR and sharpening should be among the last thing you do with your image. And they recommend that you do it outside any RAW converter. But just do how you prefer or works for you.

NR will work best with plug-ins like Noise Ninja, Neat Image and many more.
Sharpening is ok to do in CS3/Elements but you also have a lot of plug-ins.

It is also great to read about the subject here on POTN and elsewhere on the web or even books. I am great fan of Scott Kelby. He gives great advices and writes funny but good books. He even have free TV-shows that you will find by using Itunes

Anything that can be done in Raw, should be done in Raw.
However, NR and sharpening might be exception, since CS3 offers more control (masking and so forth).

IMO DPP does a good job in capture sharpening and removal of chroma noise, less so for luminance noise.

Output sharpening should be the last thing you do, and is dependant on output.

Okay so I should just convert the RAW file into either a 16 bit TIFF file or a JPEG (will not convert into a JPEG until the last PP) and eliminate all the functions that DDP has including the two that I mentioned and any Tonal Curve Assists and so on because I can do all of that in another Post Processing program? I will do one file and see if it makes a vast difference. Thank you both for your answers.

So long as you are converting to 16 bit you are retaining all the data in the RAW file. Therefore, I somewhat disagree with Rene (a rare ocurrence). For people without an editor that supports 16 bit, or those that despite having such an editor convert to jpg, it is important to do as much as possible in the converter. However, other than WB, which is best done before the gamma correction step in the converter, I believe in leaving most of it to the editor. I will, for instance, make a low contrast conversion - in order to be sure there is no unseen clipping - and only do a Levels expansion toward the end of the workflow.

I have seen articles where people theorized that NR can be best done before gamma correction, and even before demosaicing, but I have no idea when DPP does it, although I suspect it is just tacked on at the end. DXO is, as far as I know, the only converter that claims to do it early in the stream.

tzalman wrote in post #5852167
So long as you are converting to 16 bit you are retaining all the data in the RAW file.

Yes-ish: The Rawconverter is doing non-lineair processing however...

The Raw is lineair, the tiff isn't. (If I word it correctly)

Click

So IMO: Do as much as you can in Raw (DPP).
Only NR & sharpening is a personal preference.

René Damkot wrote in post #5852175
Yes-ish: The Rawconverter is doing non-lineair processing however...

The Raw is lineair, the tiff isn't. (If I word it correctly)

Click

So IMO: Do as much as you can in Raw (DPP).
Only NR & sharpening is a personal preference.

O.K., although Canon has never, AFAIK, published DPP's internal workflow, it makes sense that "Exposure" (Brighness) adjustment is made in linear space before gamma correction because the adjustment is itself linear and the math is much easier. But as soon as the Picture Style is applied the data is no longer linear.