Digital Lens Optimizer - How To Work Into Your Workflow

[arash_hazeghi]

So Arash, when you do an alt-p in DPP to transfer to Ps on a Windows machine, is the filename mangled? It is on Macs.

A filename like 20120611_143038_NOGA_4976.tif becomes DPP07DC0705110901.tif. As far as I can see not one scrap of the original filename is retained. Transfer the same file again and you get a different filename: DPP07DC0705110B57.tif!

on PC it retains the file name exactly as it is when transferring to CS5. I remember there was a time that it used to screw it up but now it has been fixed. Do you have the latest version? (3.11.xxx).

[John Chardine]

Yes, the latest version. I don't know of a system of reporting bugs like this to Canon but if someone does, let me know.

[arash_hazeghi]

Yes, the latest version. I don't know of a system of reporting bugs like this to Canon but if someone does, let me know.

PM me your OS version (and maybe system specs) I will forward to Rudy who is the right person at Canon.

and it makes no difference between using command+P or picking "Transfer to Photoshop" from the tools menu?

[John Chardine]

Will do. Thanks.

No difference if I use the menu or a keyboard shortcut. Problem has been around every since I used DPP first, several years ago now.

[Don Lacy]

Hey Don,
When you say it's slow is it because things are organized poorly or it actually runs slow (takes too long to open or convert a file) on your machine? What are your computer specs?

Arash, i find it poorly organized and not as fully featured as ACR. This is my current work flow in ACR for a Landscape image., open image in ACR go to camera calibration tab and select camera landscape if I like that color pallet I will stay with it if not I try the other combinations to find the one I like best i then go to the lens correction tab and apply those corrections, I will then go back to the basic tab and adjust exposure, recovery, fill light, blacks, clarity, vibrance, and saturation as needed that depends on the image some need all the sliders touched some only need one or two. If working on an image that has a clear and straight horizon I then select the grad filter from the tool pallet and use it to fine tune the sky. Once i get all the tonalities as close to where I want them I finish up in the detail tab were I use the masking slider to only apply capture sharpening to the areas were I want it. Now you can do a lot of this in DPP but I find the sliders do not give you as much control as the ones in ACR and I guess I am just used to ACR I spent a lot of time learning how to use it to its full potential much as you have mastered DPP and are very comfortable with it.

[QUOTE]A partial workaround for your workflow is to develop in DPP, Convert and save to tiff, then set up ACR to open the tiff (preferences). I know it is not the same as working directly on the raw data but because tiff is lossless (save without compression), it should work pretty well. (All- please correct me on this last statement if it's off base)/QUOTE]
John, Once the image is saved to tiff you lose a lot of the flexibility of working on the RAW file especially when working with the exposure and recovery sliders ACR uses the information in the other channels to rebuild the blown channel not sure if it can do that from a tiff file.

[John Chardine]

Hi Don- Yes I was wondering about things like recovery (BTW that slider is missing in the new CS6 by a Highlights and Whites sliders. I'll run a couple of tests and see what the cost of processing a tiff versus direct raw is.

[Roger Clark]

I installed DPP after two years of not having it on my system. I upgraded to the latest version and downloaded the lenses I have that DLO supports (2 lenses). My quick review: I'm not only not impressed, its useless for me. Amazing that the do not have version 1 super telephotos included.

First, the program is quite slow to load previews, especially when going to a directory with lots of images. I'm on a very fast quad core I7 machine with 12 GBytes ram, So entering a directory with a couple of hundred images: go get a cup of coffee and drink it.

I tried to check out how DLO would do on my new 35 mm f/1.4. I played around the settings and it certainly improved the image but as I fed it a star field (star images are the toughest test of an optical system), I could see the artifacts it created. I believe I can do better with Richardson-Lucy image deconvolution. The chromatic aberration did fine, but it does fine in ACR too. So I moved the sliders around on the aberration tool and then clicked to make the final image. About 50 seconds of compute time later and then: "An error occurred." Click on the more info box and get: "An error occurred." No output! No change to the raw file (thank goodness it didn't corrupt the raw file). I do not think the raw file should ever be modified, and since this program does, I feel it is dangerous, as if there is a power glitch, software error, disk write error, and the raw file might be corrupted. I would only work with a copy of a raw file in DPP, if it worked. With this error and no output, I find the program useless; I wish this were not the case. I'm OK with the compute time if the program worked (Richardson-Lucy image deconvolution would take similar amounts of time).

My workflow: I shoot raw + jpeg most of the time so I do not have to do any conversion to preview. I find bridge and other raw viewing programs sluggish and takes too long, though not as long as DPP. The fastest raw previewer I've seen is the linux shotwell image viewer in ubuntu/mint. My workflow is to use the Eye of Gnome image viewer in ubuntu (or mint) to view the jpeg files. Zooming in and roaming around is very fast (faster than any other program I have tried). When I decide to process an image, I do it in ACR on a raw file (I run photoshop and ACR in windows under linux with virtualbox). I run linux on both my office desktop and my laptop in the field.

Roger

[John Chardine]

That's strange Roger. With my relatively lowly (but still loved!) Macbook Air, i5/4gb, a folder of 2000+ images opens in contact sheet mode almost instantly. Over the years I've had several Canon lenses and there are DLO profiles for many of them. No profiles are yet available for anything with a tc attached. I imagine Canon will add more profiles as time goes on, and I hope this includes "legacy" lenses. I would like to see one for the 400DO for example, which is still a current lens of course. I gather from Arash that DLO profiles for the 500/4 and 600/4 version I lenses would not provide much value added as they are so good to begin with. Where DLO really shines is with the wide angle lenses and zooms. I find DLO does a great job in the corners with my 17-40/4 and 24-105/4 images (not that I am particularly interested in corners!), and I find it does a better job with CA than ACR.

Good point about the cr2 modification.

[Roger Clark]

That's strange Roger. With my relatively lowly (but still loved!) Macbook Air, i5/4gb, a folder of 2000+ images opens in contact sheet mode almost instantly. Over the years I've had several Canon lenses and there are DLO profiles for many of them. No profiles are yet available for anything with a tc attached. I imagine Canon will add more profiles as time goes on, and I hope this includes "legacy" lenses. I would like to see one for the 400DO for example, which is still a current lens of course. I gather from Arash that DLO profiles for the 500/4 and 600/4 version I lenses would not provide much value added as they are so good to begin with. Where DLO really shines is with the wide angle lenses and zooms. I find DLO does a great job in the corners with my 17-40/4 and 24-105/4 images (not that I am particularly interested in corners!), and I find it does a better job with CA than ACR.

Good point about the cr2 modification.

Hi John,

I checked the thumbnail generation times. DPP (I7 machine) generates 2.75 images/second. Linux (nautilus file viewer) generates 9.5 images/second (I7 machine). Further, in DPP, you can't access an imafe until the thumb is generated, so if the file you are interested in is near the end of the list, you have to wail. I tested on a directory with 952 images and it took 5.75 minutes. In linux, nautilus generates the thumbs about 3.5 times faster, and one can click on any image at any time, even before a thumb is generated and bring the image up quickly (less than a second). Then I can move from image to image (viewing with Nautilus), either forward or backward an image in less than one second. A quick "control 1" zooms to 100% (about 0.1 second to zoom), then with the mouse I can grab and move around as fast as I can move the mouse. So I can review images at about a second or so per image. Then when I find an image I want to process through a raw converter, I want to bring up the raw converter and go directly to that image without waiting minutes for thumbs to be generated. Photoshop allows me to do just that.

John, how long do the 2000+ images take to generate on your machine?

Roger

[John Chardine]

Hi Roger- On my display (27" Apple) and with the thumb size I have set (large), DPP fits 32 thumbs on the page. When I click a folder on the left it takes much less than 1s to render all the thumbs. If I scroll to another page it is just as quick. If I scroll to the end of the folder containing 2000+ images there may be a delay of 1s ± before the last page renders. Because it is only rendering one page of thumbs at a time, the delays are minimal. There is a curious behaviour though- if I go out of DPP (not quit) to another program, then come back there is a delay of a few seconds before the program becomes active and I can work on an image.

[Roger Clark]

Hi Roger- On my display (27" Apple) and with the thumb size I have set (large), DPP fits 32 thumbs on the page. When I click a folder on the left it takes much less than 1s to render all the thumbs. If I scroll to another page it is just as quick. If I scroll to the end of the folder containing 2000+ images there may be a delay of 1s ± before the last page renders. Because it is only rendering one page of thumbs at a time, the delays are minimal. There is a curious behaviour though- if I go out of DPP (not quit) to another program, then come back there is a delay of a few seconds before the program becomes active and I can work on an image.

Your system must be pre-computing the thumbs. There is no way any (consumer) disk drive could feed the data from that many images that quickly (2000 images/sec) regardless of operating system.

But another question. How long does it take to evaluate image detail at 100% zoom, e.g. from the thumb to viewing the image and roaming around at 100%, or scroll from full screen image to full screen image to 100%. I find DPP clunky: clikck on an image, new window opens, control 2 to zoom to 100% (about 3 seconds from start). Then close the window and click on another image. Why not simple next/previous buttons?

Ropger

[arash_hazeghi]

Looks like major issues with your system and settings, maybe infected by a virus . DPP works fast and fine on my 4 machines, 3 desktops and one laptop. I have never seen "error occurred" or corruption of RAW files...

good luck figuring out.

[John Chardine]

But it's not doing 2000 images/s Roger, rather just a page worth- in my case 32. It renders the thumbs on demand as you scroll to new pages. I assume for the thumbs that it is using the embedded jpegs to show the image and that can be very fast. Photo Mechanic does this and is lightening-fast.

From a thumb to an image opened at 100% takes about 1.5-1.9s. The processes that take the longest for me are for example, rendering the 100% preview in DLO or Lens aberration, and Convert and Save but I assume that these involve actual crunching of RAW data.

I agree, next/previous buttons would be very useful in Display (edit) mode.

[arash_hazeghi]

But it's not doing 2000 images/s Roger, rather just a page worth- in my case 32. It renders the thumbs on demand as you scroll to new pages. I assume for the thumbs that it is using the embedded jpegs to show the image and that can be very fast. Photo Mechanic does this and is lightening-fast.

From a thumb to an image opened at 100% takes about 1.5-1.9s. The processes that take the longest for me are for example, rendering the 100% preview in DLO or Lens aberration, and Convert and Save but I assume that these involve actual crunching of RAW data.

I agree, next/previous buttons would be very useful in Display (edit) mode.

John, it does have next/previous in the edit mode

select the images you want to edit. click view then "edit in edit image window"

now you can use arrow keys or next/previous buttons to move between images


hope this helps.

[Roger Clark]

Looks like major issues with your system and settings, maybe infected by a virus . DPP works fast and fine on my 4 machines, 3 desktops and one laptop. I have never seen "error occurred" or corruption of RAW files...

good luck figuring out.

Arash, I have no viruses. it is a clean system that I only use for imaging. I do not surf the internet with it. I do not do email with it. It has no crap-ware--I installed it myself from microsoft's install DVD. I have no issues with performance with any other program.

[John Chardine]

Thanks Arash. I forgot about that.

[Roger Clark]

Looks like major issues with your system and settings, maybe infected by a virus . DPP works fast and fine on my 4 machines, 3 desktops and one laptop. I have never seen "error occurred" or corruption of RAW files...

good luck figuring out.

Another test: go to the folder with windows explorer, and select tiles, and tiles for all the jpegs are generated very quickly--zipping right along like linux (but skipping the raw files) many times faster than DPP.

[Roger Clark]

John, it does have next/previous in the edit mode

select the images you want to edit. click view then "edit in edit image window"

now you can use arrow keys or next/previous buttons to move between images


hope this helps.

But that is a work flow problem. I don't know what files I want to edit until I've reviewed them at full resolution. So select all. But the program locks me out from selecting all until all thumbnails are generated.

Roger

[arash_hazeghi]

It is your system. DPP thumbnail generation is very fast on my systems even when I have 2000 images in a folder.

Sorry I can't help.

[John Chardine]

But that is a work flow problem. I don't know what files I want to edit until I've reviewed them at full resolution. So select all. But the program locks me out from selecting all until all thumbnails are generated.

Roger

This and other reasons are why I use Photo Mechanic and not DPP for viewing images and deciding which ones to develop (also ingesting/importing from memory cards, tagging, rating, key wording, managing files and naming, and the list goes on). As mentioned above, I use DPP right now for one reason only, that is to develop a raw image made with a Canon digital camera, and I would recommend it for that specific task.

[Roger Clark]

It is your system. DPP thumbnail generation is very fast on my systems even when I have 2000 images in a folder.

Sorry I can't help.

Probably so. I recently conducted an image processing training class for some high-end technical users (about 30 people, ~30 laptops). Examples I showed typically took 12 minutes run time on my several year old linux laptop. The windows machines took at best 25 minutes and many 2 to 4 hours to do the same job, including on some new I7 machines. The system admin guys at work say they buy two machines with identical model numbers in the same purchase order and put the same software on both, including the same windows installation, and get different results from the two machines, including some software that just doesn't work right. Oh well.

Roger

[arash_hazeghi]

This and other reasons are why I use Photo Mechanic and not DPP for viewing images and deciding which ones to develop (also ingesting/importing from memory cards, tagging, rating, key wording, managing files and naming, and the list goes on). As mentioned above, I use DPP right now for one reason only, that is to develop a raw image made with a Canon digital camera, and I would recommend it for that specific task.

Here is how I organize large number of files in DPP

select all -- > ALT (CMD) + Q. use arrow keys to quickly brows between images, bad ones I hit "x" the ones I like I hit "5" and the ones that I'm not sure I hit "4"

then I got back and go to Edit-->rating-->select rejected files. hit delete and they are gone!

then I select 5 star images and press ALT+Q again. This time I zoom to 100% and check the sharpness. If they are not as sharp as I like I hit 0 or X. Now I am only left with the images that I like. I use edit window and play with RAW settings. usually just a touch of sat or exp comp. then I batch process all into TIFFs. While it is running the batch process I check the "4-star" images to see if there is anything I like using the method above.

when doing the above with keyboard shortcuts I can go through 2-3K images in the matter of minutes and have the right files converted into TIFFs.

unfortunately there is no tagging capability as of today.