DPP discarding changes from RAW PP when converting

Quite annoying. I just spent two hours processing several candid portraits in DPP that I shot in RAW, only to find out that DPP has been discarding all my PP work during the export to TIFF. I even tried exporting to JPEG and had same results. The type of edits have no bearing; any combination of sharpness, WB, saturation, levels etc. seem to have no bearing on the saved image; it still looks identical to the original.

Anyone ever had this issue? What did you do to rectify?

In 5 years of using DPP and almost as many visiting this forum and others I have never encountered this problem, although there have been occasional complaints about a loss of sharpness or saturation. In those cases it has usually turned out that the problem was in the application used to view the converted image - its resizing algorithms for less than 100% display were poor or the application was not color managed and therefore could not display an AdobeRGB image properly.

Never seen either. They only time I've seen similar is when folks save the changes and try to view in another application. You have to export the file. Are you exporting to another folder so that the other software is seeing the newer images and not the original raw. It wont see the changes in the RAW files.

What is the other software? This is one of those tech issues, where I need to see a screen shot. If you you export as JPG and open in DPP what do you see?

ManiZ wrote in post #9269171
Quite annoying. I just spent two hours processing several candid portraits in DPP that I shot in RAW, only to find out that DPP has been discarding all my PP work during the export to TIFF. I even tried exporting to JPEG and had same results. The type of edits have no bearing; any combination of sharpness, WB, saturation, levels etc. seem to have no bearing on the saved image; it still looks identical to the original.

Anyone ever had this issue? What did you do to rectify?

What steps are you actually taking in your workflow?

Are you aware that the "edits" you do in DPP are not actually applied to the raw data? They are just "notations" or "tags" (called "recipes" in Canon parlance)--instructions on how to convert the data to a jpeg or tiff image. That data must be specifically saved with the raw file or it will be discarded when you close the raw file.

Check Preferences > General Settings > Save recipe and choose whether you want it to "Display message when adding file" or "Add to file automatically." If you already have "Add to file automatically" selected, then you might actually have a problem with DPP.

Otherwise, DPP should ask you when you close the file if you want to save the changes, and you should be clicking the "Yes" button.

And as has been mentioned, only DPP can read the DPP "recipes." If you open the raw file in any other converter, it will not display the edits you made in DPP...or vice versa. Each company writes its raw edit tags in its own proprietary format.

Or are you saying that the changes don't even appear in the converted tiff or jpeg?

I guess that wasn't clear enough from my message. Yes, the changes are being discarded by DPP when it converts, exports, and saves my images as either TIFF or JPEG files. The application I use afterwards to view those saved TIFFs/JPEGs should have absolutely nothing to do with it (it is Photoshop CS4 in my case, by the way). I even tried the Windows Picture Viewer for the JPEGs and had the same issue; the supposedly final version of the file was an exact replica of the unprocessed RAW original without any of the updates I made in DPP.

Exact workflow is the same as always; RAW files opened in DPP, after making the necessary processing updates, I went to File>>Convert and Save and chose 16-bit TIFF as the conversion format. When I didn't see any of the changes in the saved file, I came back to DPP and saved as 16-bit TIFF and EXIF-JPEG. Same result.

ManiZ wrote in post #9270563
I guess that wasn't clear enough from my message. Yes, the changes are being discarded by DPP when it converts, exports, and saves my images as either TIFF or JPEG files. The application I use afterwards to view those saved TIFFs/JPEGs should have absolutely nothing to do with it (it is Photoshop CS4 in my case, by the way). I even tried the Windows Picture Viewer for the JPEGs and had the same issue; the supposedly final version of the file was an exact replica of the unprocessed RAW original without any of the updates I made in DPP.

Exact workflow is the same as always; RAW files opened in DPP, after making the necessary processing updates, I went to File>>Convert and Save and chose 16-bit TIFF as the conversion format. When I didn't see any of the changes in the saved file, I came back to DPP and saved as 16-bit TIFF and EXIF-JPEG. Same result.

How do you have that Preference set that I mentioned?

Do you see the changes when you later re-open the raw in DPP?

Never encountered this either...

ManiZ wrote in post #9270563
The application I use afterwards to view those saved TIFFs/JPEGs should have absolutely nothing to do with it

It can, in the sense that it can display the image wrong: For instance Windows Picture and Fax Viewer is not color managed, so will display an image different (wrong!) then a correctly setup DPP or PS. And that's not even mentioning the horrid resizing / sharpening....

ManiZ wrote in post #9270563
(it is Photoshop CS4 in my case, by the way). I even tried the Windows Picture Viewer for the JPEGs and had the same issue; the supposedly final version of the file was an exact replica of the unprocessed RAW original without any of the updates I made in DPP.

Is this "Windows Picture & Fax Viewer"? That should display different from DPP and PSCS4.
If you are using Vista, then it's Windows Photo Gallery. That one should be color managed..

ManiZ wrote in post #9270563
Exact workflow is the same as always; RAW files opened in DPP, after making the necessary processing updates, I went to File>>Convert and Save and chose 16-bit TIFF as the conversion format. When I didn't see any of the changes in the saved file, I came back to DPP and saved as 16-bit TIFF and EXIF-JPEG. Same result.

And this never happened before? What is different now?

Rene, yes, this has never happened with DPP before and I haven't changed any settings; that's what makes it so perplexing. My OS is Win7 and I was wrong earlier about the default photo app; it is actually Windows Photo Viewer and it has always displayed my DPP-processed JPEGs correctly until now.

Kirk, thanks for your input as well. I did see your note about recipes earlier and no, my DPP, by choice, did not have the option of automatically applying recipe. I never do that as I prefer leaving my original RAW files in their unprocessed form when closing DPP. Since I always delete RAW files from my camera's CF card, I need the originals stored on my PC (and external HDD) should I need them later. So I always process RAW in DPP, convert/save them to TIFF and close DPP without applying recipe changes permanently. As mentioned earlier, this issue never arose before.

This is OT from your problem, but since you raised it I"ll just comment that saving your edits does not touch the RAW image data. It merely inserts some new info into the metadata without overwriting the camera's data and you can always return to the camera defaults with one click in the Adjustments menu.

BTW, have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling DPP or rolling back to an earlier date with the Restore function?

And, Does DPP see the changes? Export, close dpp, open DPP and point to exported image, what version?

René Damkot wrote in post #9270882
And this never happened before? What is different now?

This is a great question. I used to do tech support and only after 15 min of probing would you get the answer. Nothing. Everything is the same, like I said, the same as I had it before. Before what? Well, my computer crashed and I reinstalled everything the same.

I'm not saying OP did this at all, I just think that is a great question.

ManiZ wrote in post #9269171
Quite annoying. I just spent two hours processing several candid portraits in DPP that I shot in RAW, only to find out that DPP has been discarding all my PP work during the export to TIFF. I even tried exporting to JPEG and had same results. The type of edits have no bearing; any combination of sharpness, WB, saturation, levels etc. seem to have no bearing on the saved image; it still looks identical to the original.

Anyone ever had this issue? What did you do to rectify?

I hope that you do not find this question too lame or insulting, but are you opening the TIFF file or the CR2 file in CS4? Just wondering because some folks have their computers set up to not show file extensions.

Ha! Valid question, Bill. No, I am not opening the original CR2 file in PSCS4, just the converted/exported version created in DPP.

Zazoh, sorry I missed your question earlier. The answer is no, even DPP doesn't see the changes made in the converted file when I open it. It only sees them in the RAW file I originally processed.

Thanks tzalman; your post wasn't OT in the least. I really had no idea DPP lets us revert to the untouched RAW image in the Adjustments menu.

All, I really appreciate the input. I wanted to remove and reinstall DPP yesterday but can't seem to find my original CD; will likely have it by tomorrow and will report here whether a reinstall fixed the issue.

ManiZ wrote in post #9273889
Ha! Valid question, Bill. No, I am not opening the original CR2 file in PSCS4, just the converted/exported version created in DPP.......

OK, I have one more WAG before giving up. It is a long shot, but please humor me. I could be jumping to conclusions, but the way that I read the above sentence is that you are creating a copy of the original CR2 file which contains your editing changes ... and then opening that copy (which is supposed to have your editing changes) in other programs. Is my interpretation correct (or should I go take a cold shower?) Disregard all the rest if I am on the wrong track.

Next, you opened the converted version of your CR2 file (which I am assuming is also a CR2 file) in PSCS4 and ... nothing ... no editing changes. If that is the case, the answer is that you won't see any changes because ONLY DPP will see any editing changes that it makes to a CR2 file. I know that you were creating TIFF's and JPG's, but I am just grasping at straws that you might also be opening a CR2 that is a working copy of the original.

You probably already know this, but I will say it anyway. When DPP works on a RAW file and saves the editing changes, the RAW data in the file is never touched. A RAW file is like a suitcase full of different sub files -- the RAW data, a JPG image, camera settings metadata, EXIF metadata, and editing changes. Some of this data is binary and some like the metadata is text. Editing changes done in DPP bears no resemblance to editing changes in ACR and therefore, Canon's editing changes stored in its compartment in the RAW file is useless to ACR or any other RAW converter -- and vice versa. So when ACR reads a CR2 file it only reads the RAW data that the camera wrote plus the EXIF. It will also read the JPG file and temporarily display it in Bridge until it creates its own version to replace it within a few seconds.

All that I can come up with about the TIFF and JPG images not showing changes is that you did not really save the edited version, but I do not use DPP enough to give any specific advice. Good luck in solving this mystery.

Since you haven't been saving your edits in the RAW file, I'd suggest the following exercise: Open a RAW and do a really extreme edit so you can easily see the difference, like Tungsten WB on an outdoors shot to turn it blue. Click Save from the File menu and close DPP. Reopen DPP and the RAW - is it still blue or whatever? If no, you have a seriously busted copy of DPP, **** to Canon as represented by Chuck Westphal through the box at the bottom of this page: http://digitaljournali​st.org/issue0912/tech-tips.html
If the edit has been successfully saved, make a jpg or tif. Still no good, I'd write to Mr. Westphal. But if the edits do come through at least you will have the workaround of saving the metadata before converting.