Canon DDP vs. the world for RAW

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koffiejunkie

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I notice that my images look a little nicer in DDP than in either Aperture or ACR. In Aperture and ACR the colours look a little washed - compared to DDP if you put them side by side, you'd never notice if you weren't comparing. One colour, oddly, looks better in ACR - blue sky. :confused:

I exported an image to TIFF using DDP, imported into Aperture next to a CR2 file, and tried to match the colour, but I can't (might be my lack of skill).

I put some samples up at http://gallery.blxm.info/v/raw/ The left half of each is ACR, the right half is DDP.

What do you guys think. Why do they differ? I accept that different software render the RAW data differently, but I'm amused that the images look identical in ACR and Aperture, but different in DDP.
 
OK, I've found some more information, it looks like this is a common observation and unique to the 40D's RAW file (updated since the 400D maybe)? I'm interested to see if the same issue arises with the 450D...

The suggestion is to use tiff as an intermediate format. The hassle with this is, DDP makes a 50-60MB TIFF from each CR2 file. Photoshop and Aperture will happily read this, but of course, it takes 5-6 times as long. DDP doesn't offer a compression option, and once the TIFF is opened in photoshop, I can't see a way to convert it to, say, DNG. I can re-save it as TIFF with compression, but that doesn't seem to bring down the size much.

Anyone know how to get from DDP to, say, a .dng file?
 
koffiejunkie said:
I notice that my images look a little nicer in DDP than in either Aperture or ACR. In Aperture and ACR the colours look a little washed - compared to DDP if you put them side by side, you'd never notice if you weren't comparing. One colour, oddly, looks better in ACR - blue sky. :confused:
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ACR? :confused:

What version of Aperture are you using? The latest has a completely different RAW converter.
 
ACR = Adobe Camera Raw. My Aperture is 2.0 - I've read that there is a 2.01 update but it doesn't change RAW conversion. I'm downloading it now anyway, but it's going to take a while - coming down at 4kb/s :(
 
koffiejunkie said:
I notice that my images look a little nicer in DDP than in either Aperture or ACR. In Aperture and ACR the colours look a little washed - compared to DDP if you put them side by side, you'd never notice if you weren't comparing. One colour, oddly, looks better in ACR - blue sky. :confused:
Click to expand...
DPP will include the camera settings when it renders the picture. If you set the camera's picture style to neutral, you will probably see the same picture in both DPP and ACR. ACR will ignore any camera settings (such as sharpness and saturation).
 
Aah, that makes sense. Does those particular settings differ from photo to photo or is it constant? I.e. can I somehow set up a profile for the camera in ACR that will give the same results?
 
koffiejunkie said:
Aah, that makes sense. Does those particular settings differ from photo to photo or is it constant? I.e. can I somehow set up a profile for the camera in ACR that will give the same results?
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Are you using bridge to manage your workflow then?
 
Nope, Aperture for now - I just worked with ACR (open file in Photoshop) more in the last few days because I was cropping and scaling pictures to e-mail and upload.

I'd really like to get it right in Aperture, but I guess it's impossible to avoid ACR if you're working with Photoshop too.
 
koffiejunkie said:
Nope, Aperture for now - I just worked with ACR (open file in Photoshop) more in the last few days because I was cropping and scaling pictures to e-mail and upload.

I'd really like to get it right in Aperture, but I guess it's impossible to avoid ACR if you're working with Photoshop too.
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I never use ACR and I'm a regular Photoshop user. I think about 90% of my adjustments are done in Aperture but if I need a little something something (esp noise reduction) I open it in PS from within aperture.

BTW - you can easily crop and scale with aperture.
 
bwana said:
I never use ACR and I'm a regular Photoshop user. I think about 90% of my adjustments are done in Aperture but if I need a little something something (esp noise reduction) I open it in PS from within aperture.
Click to expand...

Fair enough, but I still see the same result, so it doesn't really matter how I do it.

BTW - you can easily crop and scale with aperture.
Click to expand...

Saw that just after I did it in Photoshop.... :)
 
koffiejunkie said:
Fair enough, but I still see the same result, so it doesn't really matter how I do it.



Saw that just after I did it in Photoshop.... :)
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Actually it might - if you do the adjustments in aperture the file stays at around 10mb - open it in PS and you're looking at around 40mb per layer (using a lossless format).
 
bwana said:
Actually it might - if you do the adjustments in aperture the file stays at around 10mb - open it in PS and you're looking at around 40mb per layer (using a lossless format).
Click to expand...

Wouldn't that be because the CR2 file is compressed (lossless, I hope!) and Aperture doesn't actually change the file itself, while photoshop opens it uncompressed and/or creates a new file with more bits?
 
koffiejunkie said:
Wouldn't that be because the CR2 file is compressed (lossless, I hope!) and Aperture doesn't actually change the file itself, while photoshop opens it uncompressed and/or creates a new file with more bits?
Click to expand...
From what I understand RAW is a compressed data file while TIFF is an uncompressed image file.
 
bwana said:
From what I understand RAW is a compressed data file while TIFF is an uncompressed image file.
Click to expand...

That's more or less what I was thinking. :) BTW, RAW isn't always compressed - depends on the camera. The PEF files from the 6MP Pentax is the same size as from the 10MP Canon. If I convert the PEF to DNG it drops to around 5-6MB, if I convert the CR2 to DNG it stays roundabout the same.

Found some values online - I'll play around with that and see what happens.
 
koffiejunkie said:
That's more or less what I was thinking. :) BTW, RAW isn't always compressed - depends on the camera. The PEF files from the 6MP Pentax is the same size as from the 10MP Canon. If I convert the PEF to DNG it drops to around 5-6MB, if I convert the CR2 to DNG it stays roundabout the same.

Found some values online - I'll play around with that and see what happens.
Click to expand...
I guess I should have specified canon as that's what I have. Canon CR2 files (including your 40D) are losslessly compressed - you'll see a variance in the file sizes which is apparently indicative of this.

Those values look like they're for Lightroom?
 
bwana said:
Those values look like they're for Lightroom?
Click to expand...

They are. I tried it quickly with ACR just to see, and it came out nice but with a bit too much red. I'll work at this when I'm home (big monitor).

I haven't even tried to see how to do the same thing in Aperture yet. At the moment I'm busy with other stuff. Sucking an OSX build for MySQL through this gprs connection (painful) and looking for at old lenses on eBay. Found this gem - curious to see what it will go for. Just a day left and it's only at £3.99 now...
 
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