Digital Lens Optimizer - How To Work Into Your Workflow

[Jay Gould]

This thread results from this discussion: http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...d=1#post814320

Clearly there is a need to apply DLO to "cleanup" distortions caused by a variety of conditions.

I use Lightroom; however, given the respect I have for Arash as a scientist and a professional photographer, the fact that Arash uses DPP causes me to ask the question: how can the DLO/conversion aspects of DPP be incorporated into a Lightroom Workflow?

[arash_hazeghi]

Hi Jay I think you asked this question before. DLO only works on a RAW file and you can only use one RAW convertor at a time. It cannot be used in any other program other than DPP. You can save your files that have been corrected by DLO as a TIFF file and then open them in LR but I don't see the point as you are not working on a RAW anymore.

DLO is a part of DPP. If you want to use LR you need to use the lens correction feature that Adobe provides for LR.

[Jay Gould]

Hi Jay I think you asked this question before. DLO only works on a RAW file and you can only use one RAW convertor at a time. It cannot be used in any other program other than DPP. You can save your files that have been corrected by DLO as a TIFF file and then open them in LR but I don't see the point as you are not working on a RAW anymore.

DLO is a part of DPP. If you want to use LR you need to use the lens correction feature that Adobe provides for LR.

At what stage during the DPP process is the image converted from a RAW file to some other format, e.g., DNG, PSD, TIFF?

I import my CR2s into LR as DNGs. They stay as DNGs until I export to PS and then they are saved as layered PSDs; my Masters are ultimately saved as flattened TIFFs.

If you work on a CR2 in DPP, are the changes saved in the metadata so that you then work on the same CR2 in LR; OR, am I completely off-base?

[arash_hazeghi]

At what stage during the DPP process is the image converted from a RAW file to some other format, e.g., DNG, PSD, TIFF?

I import my CR2s into LR as DNGs. They stay as DNGs until I export to PS and then they are saved as layered PSDs; my Masters are ultimately saved as flattened TIFFs.

If you work on a CR2 in DPP, are the changes saved in the metadata so that you then work on the same CR2 in LR; OR, am I completely off-base?

1) Anything other than CR2 or DNG is not a RAW file. TIFF. PSD etc. is no longer a RAW file.

2) DPP cannot save in DNG format, so you cannot transfer a RAW file from DPP into any other program.

3) No, DPP tags cannot be read by any other programs. In case of DLO, DPP actually embeds a large amounts of information (results of the calculations) to the original CR2 file. In this case CR2 is no longer readable in 3rd party applications.

There is no way you can combine DPP/DLO with LR. Just pick one and stick with it. Or use them separately.

[arash_hazeghi]

I wanted to post something here but I posted in the other thread! can't move it now

[Jay Gould]

I wanted to post something here but I posted in the other thread! can't move it now

Copy and Paste; so what if it is in both places!

[Humberto Ramos]

IMO DPP is not as user friendly as LR, but if DLO in the future will include the 600mm IS version I, will try to learn to use it, seems very usefull.

[David Stephens]

DPP's clunky interface, when compared to LR and/or DxO's Optics Pro, has always deterred me from making it my default RAW converter. I started with DxO a few years ago mostly because it included a DLO-like correction module that I preferred to DPP and LR at that time (2009). I plan to buy a Canon 5D MkIII soon and want to seriously compare DPP and DxO and consider making DPP my default RAW conversion software.

Canon has upped the anti and may well become "the" RAW conversion software for those seeking the best IQ possible. It would be nice if they'd update their user interface to compete seriously with the competition, but their execution of DLO may induce many of to take a step backwards in convenience in order to take advantage of the pluses of DPP.

[David Stephens]

IQ between DPP with DLO on and DxO Optics Pro is very close. I was just comparing using a random shot of the Grand Canyon. I'll take something with my 24-105mm, with foreground and background detail and some straight lines to better test the geometric corrections of the two programs. There's no doubt that DPP is waaaay slower. DxO processes within 4 to 6-sec. Applying DLO takes several times longer than that and final RAW conversion is much longer. The real problem is that the DPP user interface remains extremely clunky. Anyway, I'll try to do a more controlled and meaningful comparison this weekend. I got the brightness and color balance different so the two images are not comparable, except when you focus on the details.

Here's DxO:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcstep/...n/photostream/

and here's DPP with DLO:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcstep/...n/photostream/

When I work up this weekend's image I'll get the brightness and color much closer.

[Roger Clark]

IQ between DPP with DLO on and DxO Optics Pro is very close. I was just comparing using a random shot of the Grand Canyon. I'll take something with my 24-105mm, with foreground and background detail and some straight lines to better test the geometric corrections of the two programs. There's no doubt that DPP is waaaay slower. DxO processes within 4 to 6-sec. Applying DLO takes several times longer than that and final RAW conversion is much longer. The real problem is that the DPP user interface remains extremely clunky. Anyway, I'll try to do a more controlled and meaningful comparison this weekend. I got the brightness and color balance different so the two images are not comparable, except when you focus on the details.

Here's DxO:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcstep/...n/photostream/

and here's DPP with DLO:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcstep/...n/photostream/

When I work up this weekend's image I'll get the brightness and color much closer.

Hi David,

Selecting the 2048 version (the highest resolution), I see major differences in fine detail with DPP clearly better than DxO. Look at the trail in the canton at lower right, and the grains of snow on the tree trunk at lower right. I think full resolution would show even more differences.

Roger

[David Stephens]

I agree Roger. I must have been tired last night because when I look on my monitor at work (the highly recommended 24" Dell), it's not even close.

Now I see that my DxO version was a generation old. I'll redo this this weekend, using DxO 7.5 and this same version of DPP, that I just downloaded last night.

I was surprised to see that there are even DLO corrections for the new series II 500mm and 600mm. If they can improve on those MDF charts, then this is indeed stunning software. (OMG, the user interface really sucks and it's slow as mud).

[David Stephens]

Roger said:

Selecting the 2048 version (the highest resolution), I see major differences in fine detail with DPP clearly better than DxO. Look at the trail in the canton at lower right, and the grains of snow on the tree trunk at lower right. I think full resolution would show even more differences.

Please look again when you have a minute. I reprocessed the DxO image using Optics Pro 7.5 with a substantially improved result. I think that they are now extremely close.

I also picked six other images to reprocess in the latest DPP and DxO version. Start to finish took 8-minutes with DxO and 24-minutes in DPP (DLO adds substantial processing time). If I discount my DPP time to allow for my unfamiliarity, then I'd say that DPP takes roughly 50% more time.

At high ISO, I did find that DPP's default setting was better than DxO's (much less noise), but DxO did as well or better when I activated their "high ISO" setting.

I may post a few more results this weekend, but it's easy enough for anyone to try for themselves since DPP is included in Canon's system and DxO can be downloaded for a free 30-day trial. Of course, if you use LR or Capture One, then you'll want to compare those.

DPP is very effective, just a bit more clunky to use. I was also surprised at how much DxO had improved in 7-months and 2-generations. (They transitioned to 64-bit during that seven months).

[David Stephens]

I be curious to see comparisons of LR and Capture One to DPP with DLO engaged. Anyone interested in showing one or the other?

[John Chardine]

I would not expect any major differences between how LR and ACR develop Canon raw images as they are both Adobe products and presumably use the same development engine. ACR vs. DPP/DLO comparison here:

http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...706#post814706

[John Chardine]

1) Anything other than CR2 or DNG is not a RAW file. TIFF. PSD etc. is no longer a RAW file.

2) DPP cannot save in DNG format, so you cannot transfer a RAW file from DPP into any other program.

3) No, DPP tags cannot be read by any other programs. In case of DLO, DPP actually embeds a large amounts of information (results of the calculations) to the original CR2 file. In this case CR2 is no longer readable in 3rd party applications.

There is no way you can combine DPP/DLO with LR. Just pick one and stick with it. Or use them separately.

ACR is able to read cr2 files that have had DLO data embedded by DPP.

[arash_hazeghi]

ACR is able to read cr2 files that have had DLO data embedded by DPP.

Yes thanks for correcting, it reads the CR2 but not the adjustments.

[arash_hazeghi]

The image presented above doesn't look good IMO. There is lots of noise, sharpening artifacts and details are coarse. It should not be used as a reference.

I think it is best to learn how to use DPP first before making conclusions or try to compare it with other software.

A DPP conversion with correct parameters should result in an output that looks crisp and detailed with little noise or sharpening artifacts. The defualt settings often results in a poor output.

Here is a full size 22Mpixel JPEG from RAW, DPP 3.11. 5D3 100mm f/4 1/6sec ISO 100 warning: 12MB file

http://ari1982.smugmug.com/Other/external-link/12987336_Bv6N3R#!i=1936656269&k=wwPHGDj&lb=1&s=O

[arash_hazeghi]

IMO DPP is not as user friendly as LR, but if DLO in the future will include the 600mm IS version I, will try to learn to use it, seems very usefull.

Humberto super telephoto lenses are almost perfect in their optics, there isn't really much to gain by using DLO with a 600mm prime lens. It is mostly for wide angle and zoom lenses that suffer from imperfections in the optics.

[David Stephens]

Arash said:

Humberto super telephoto lenses are almost perfect in their optics, there isn't really much to gain by using DLO with a 600mm prime lens. It is mostly for wide angle and zoom lenses that suffer from imperfections in the optics.

I always assumed this, but then why is Canon including DLO for the Series II 500mm and 600mm? Could we have a with/without demo?

[Roger Clark]

Humberto super telephoto lenses are almost perfect in their optics, there isn't really much to gain by using DLO with a 600mm prime lens. It is mostly for wide angle and zoom lenses that suffer from imperfections in the optics.

Arash said:
I always assumed this, but then why is Canon including DLO for the Series II 500mm and 600mm? Could we have a with/without demo?

Looking at the MTF charts, only the 500 f/4 version II comes closest to perfection. However, Canon MTf charts have, for the fine detail, only 30 lines pairs per mm, so spacing of 33 microns, or 5 to 6 pixels. We don't know what the MTF charts look like at 80 to 100 line pairs per mm, which even at f/4, diffraction will have a small but detrimental impact in fine detail contrast. And even with the new lenses, adding TCs degrades IQ some. So DLO is a very interesting new technology that could, in theory, help even "perfect" lenses.

Note too that DLO "corrects" for diffraction. This must mean a boost in contrast at high frequencies. So even a perfect lens (diffraction limited) could benefit from DLO, especially as one closes the aperture.

I would be interested in seeing DLO applied to Doug's test images for version 1 and Version II 600 f/4 lenses. The version I might come closer to version II when images are run through DLO.

Roger

[arash_hazeghi]

Roger has good point that the standard MTF charts only go to 30lpm, much less than what is needed for today's sensors.

I think the reason DLO does not support the MKI super-telephoto lenses is that the CPU in those lenses does not report one of the key parameters that is needed for DLO calculation. Nevertheless the optics is so good that it will hardly make a difference...

[arash_hazeghi]

here is another extreme example from 17-40. The improvement in sharpness w/o adding much noise is really striking.

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=219478

[Roger Clark]

Roger has good point that the standard MTF charts only go to 30lpm, much less than what is needed for today's sensors.

I think the reason DLO does not support the MKI super-telephoto lenses is that the CPU in those lenses does not report one of the key parameters that is needed for DLO calculation. Nevertheless the optics is so good that it will hardly make a difference...

Arash, What is that key parameter that is missing?

Roger

[arash_hazeghi]

Finally Canon has put a new tutorial for DPP on their site. (the last one was from 2008!) doesn't go through all the tricks but it's a good start

http://learn.usa.canon.com/galleries...utorials.shtml


Here is a list of cameras and lenses that are currently supported by DLO

[arash_hazeghi]

Arash, What is that key parameter that is missing?

Roger

I have asked the same question from Canon, they haven't replied yet. It also doesn't work with a TC attached.

[David Stephens]

Arash said:

A DPP conversion with correct parameters should result in an output that looks crisp and detailed with little noise or sharpening artifacts. The defualt settings often results in a poor output.

Pray tell, where does one learn techniques contra to DPP's guidance? I see tutorials for competing software all over the place. Canon's own DPP tutorials are very limited, so where do I gain this special knowledge? Maybe you could take a daylight scenic and tell us your settings, for starters.

[Roger Clark]

I have asked the same question from Canon, they haven't replied yet. It also doesn't work with a TC attached.

Well, I can think of only 2 relevant parameters: 1) f/ratio, and 2) focal distance, and both of those are reported. I think this is a marketing decision to try and entice people to buy newer L lenses. A reason to go with another vendor.

Roger

[Jay Gould]

Finally Canon has put a new tutorial for DPP on their site. (the last one was from 2008!) doesn't go through all the tricks but it's a good start

http://learn.usa.canon.com/galleries...utorials.shtml


Here is a list of cameras and lenses that are currently supported by DLO

Arash, You are not Canon - we will not shoot the messenger!!

However, that "tutorial" is next to useless! It is a 2:28 selling video. Regarding DLO, it simply tells you it exists.

BTW, in Firefox I use http://www.savevid.com/ + the Ant Video Downloader to grab Flash movies and save to hard drive.

[arash_hazeghi]

Arash, You are not Canon - we will not shoot the messenger!!

However, that "tutorial" is next to useless! It is a 2:28 selling video. Regarding DLO, it simply tells you it exists.

BTW, in Firefox I use http://www.savevid.com/ + the Ant Video Downloader to grab Flash movies and save to hard drive.

I am sorry if it was poor. Someone at Canon sent the link, I didn't watch it myself.

The best DPP tutorial was on B&H wesbite from 2008. It was a good 2 hour real instruction, unfortunately it's old now.

[John Chardine]

I just updated my DLO profiles to include the 300/2.8 II in anticipation of working on an image from a friend who has the lens. It was a little over 1mb download compared to, for example, the 16-35/2.8 I profile which was almost 29mb. I take this as an indication that the new super-teles do not need a lot of data to correct them.

[David Stephens]

John said:

I just updated my DLO profiles to include the 300/2.8 II in anticipation of working on an image from a friend who has the lens. It was a little over 1mb download compared to, for example, the 16-35/2.8 I profile which was almost 29mb. I take this as an indication that the new super-teles do not need a lot of data to correct them.

I think it's also a function of prime vs. zoom. If I understand correctly, with zooms the corrections are applied at every focal length and every aperture. For my 24-105mm and 70-200mm the files were 70MB.

[John Chardine]

Good point.

[David Stephens]

Arash, will your Professional Photographers' Guide to Noise Reduction for EOS Cameras demonstrate how to use DPP to achieve the results that you suggest?

[arash_hazeghi]

Arash, will your Professional Photographers' Guide to Noise Reduction for EOS Cameras demonstrate how to use DPP to achieve the results that you suggest?

it covers DPP and NR but not the DLO.

[David Stephens]

Thank you Arash. The DLO part seems pretty self evident (let me know if you think I'm wrong). I'll download your guide tomorrow.

[arash_hazeghi]

Thank you Arash. The DLO part seems pretty self evident (let me know if you think I'm wrong). I'll download your guide tomorrow.

yes David it's pretty much self explanatory except for you need to drop RAW sharpness to 1 or 0 as Canon recommends when using DLO.

[David Stephens]

Thanks Arash.

[Jay Gould]

Arash, have you considered doing an update to your DPP guide to include you approach to DLO? Please!

[arash_hazeghi]

Arash, have you considered doing an update to your DPP guide to include you approach to DLO? Please!

I am working on a guide just for DPP alone, it will come out next year and will cover DLO. The DLO was not available when I put together the current guide :)

[Jay Gould]

I am working on a guide just for DPP alone, it will come out next year and will cover DLO. The DLO was not available when I put together the current guide :)

When do we want it? We want it NOW!!

Look forward to it; I have a feeling you are going to cause a lot of DPP/DLO converts/LR abandonments.

Cheers

[Don Lacy]

When do we want it? We want it NOW!!

Look forward to it; I have a feeling you are going to cause a lot of DPP/DLO converts/LR abandonments.

Cheers

After reading this thread i downloaded the latest version of DPP and played around with it again and came to the same conclusion that i have in the past and that is DPP does a wonderful job converting the RAW file but the interface is slow and awkward. it also lacks several features that ACR has that I find critical to my work flow and that includes the ability to mask capture sharpening the use of a grad filter for landscapes and clarity and vibrance sliders. Now the DLO feature is very interesting and I still need to play around with that feature but since only one of my lenses is profiled that alone is not enough to get me to change my workflow. I so want to like DPP more but for me its limitations out weighs its benefits for 99% of my images.

[arash_hazeghi]

After reading this thread i downloaded the latest version of DPP and played around with it again and came to the same conclusion that i have in the past and that is DPP does a wonderful job converting the RAW file but the interface is slow and awkward. it also lacks several features that ACR has that I find critical to my work flow and that includes the ability to mask capture sharpening the use of a grad filter for landscapes and clarity and vibrance sliders. Now the DLO feature is very interesting and I still need to play around with that feature but since only one of my lenses is profiled that alone is not enough to get me to change my workflow. I so want to like DPP more but for me its limitations out weighs its benefits for 99% of my images.

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?

[John Chardine]

Hi Don- Based on this and other threads I too have taken a second look at DPP. My conclusion is that it does such a good job with raw development, I am prepared to put up with its quirks. I run DPP on a Macbook Air, not the fastest computer out there, but DPP works pretty well on it. I see a noticeable delay when I am Converting and saving files to tiff and I assume the software is just doing a lot of things in the BG. There are some bugs in the program (filename change when transferring to Photoshop, Convert and save just doesn't work sometimes) and I would like to see the ability to move between images while in the edit window but as I say, overall the benefits outweigh the costs IMO.

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).

[David Stephens]

Comparing processing speed of DPP to DxO on a relatively powerful Windows 7, 64-bit machine with an i7 processor, 8GB of RAM, a high level graphics card with Open CL enabled, DxO takes about 4 to 6-seconds to convert RAW files averaging 25MB to highest quality jpegs. DPP takes about 6-times that, including the time before batch processing but with you apply DLO.

DxO substantially increased their performance with the introduction of v. 7 last winter. When I started a few years back, with v. 5, it's was over a minute per file. It was also prone to crash and lock up. I haven't had a crash or lock up in months now. However, I wouldn't recommend trying to run it on a 32-bit OS (they don't either).

I'm curious to read how LR compares in processing time.

[arash_hazeghi]

Comparing processing speed of DPP to DxO on a relatively powerful Windows 7, 64-bit machine with an i7 processor, 8GB of RAM, a high level graphics card with Open CL enabled, DxO takes about 4 to 6-seconds to convert RAW files averaging 25MB to highest quality jpegs. DPP takes about 6-times that, including the time before batch processing but with you apply DLO.

DxO substantially increased their performance with the introduction of v. 7 last winter. When I started a few years back, with v. 5, it's was over a minute per file. It was also prone to crash and lock up. I haven't had a crash or lock up in months now. However, I wouldn't recommend trying to run it on a 32-bit OS (they don't either).

I'm curious to read how LR compares in processing time.

So it takes 30-40sec to convert a single RAW on your system? Does this time include DLO calculation?

Here is how long it takes on my machine to convert a 5D3 RAW to a 16Bit TIFF (about 100MB final size):

Rendering : from the time I double click on the image to image being rendered at 100% (about 3 seconds)
Saving a 16Bit TIFF: about 4 seconds

This is w/o DLO calculation. With DLO it depends on the lens and the scene, I have seen as long as 12 seconds. It's a quite heavy calculation and since the file size increases the disk write time might become a bottle neck if you have a slower drive.

I have quad-core i7 (4GHz) 24GB DDR3 and SATA6 SSD drive win7 pro 64-Bit. As far as I know DPP supports multi-core CPUs but not the GPU for calculation/rendering.

[arash_hazeghi]

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).

yup, you can do this if you wish but what adjustments are you planning to make in LR/ACR that you cannot do in DPP at the time of RAW conversion?

I do my RAW development in DPP and then dump the TIFF into Photoshop (without actually saving a TIFF but using Alt+P in DPP) where I can do advanced editing such as making layers, masks and filters. Then I save the final file as a PSD file so I can come back and change my adjustments later.

BTW, the TIFF compression is lossless (it's like zipping).

Regarding name change, it used to be like that but now it keeps the file name when transferring to Photoshop. I don't know when they fixed it but it works now (at least in Windows).

[David Stephens]

Arash stated:

So it takes 30-40sec to convert a single RAW on your system? Does this time include DLO calculation?

Here is how long it takes on my machine to convert a 5D3 RAW to a 16Bit TIFF (about 100MB final size):

Rendering : from the time I double click on the image to image being rendered at 100% (about 3 seconds)
Saving a 16Bit TIFF: about 4 seconds

This is w/o DLO calculation. With DLO it depends on the lens and the scene, I have seen as long as 12 seconds. It's a quite heavy calculation and since the file size increases the disk write time might become a bottle neck if you have a slower drive.

I have quad-core i7 (4GHz) 24GB DDR3 and SATA6 SSD drive win7 pro 64-Bit. As far as I know DPP supports multi-core CPUs but not the GPU for calculation/rendering.

The time I gave for DPP includes the DLO calculation.

I'll have to try a tiff conversion tonight and put on the stop watch for you.

DPP doesn't seem to take advantage of Open CL, which turns out to be a large factor in getting my short DxO times.

[John Chardine]

From Don's post above:

"it (DPP) also lacks several features that ACR has that I find critical to my work flow and that includes the ability to mask capture sharpening, the use of a grad filter for landscapes and clarity and vibrance sliders."

[Andrew Merwin]

I would like to see the ability to move between images while in the edit window but as I say, overall the benefits outweigh the costs IMO.

You can do the above in DPP. Select the files that you want to edit by command clicking each file & then click on the "edit image window" in the ULC of the open program window. All the files that you selected will be selectable & editable in DPP.

[John Chardine]

yup, you can do this if you wish but what adjustments are you planning to make in LR/ACR that you cannot do in DPP at the time of RAW conversion?

I do my RAW development in DPP and then dump the TIFF into Photoshop (without actually saving a TIFF but using Alt+P in DPP) where I can do advanced editing such as making layers, masks and filters. Then I save the final file as a PSD file so I can come back and change my adjustments later.

BTW, the TIFF compression is lossless (it's like zipping).

Regarding name change, it used to be like that but now it keeps the file name when transferring to Photoshop. I don't know when they fixed it but it works now (at least in Windows).

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!