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 p.1 #1 · Why didn't I try DPP before? | |
I became a big-time fan of shooting RAW many years ago, back to before my digital SLR days with the Canon G2. In recent years I've been using C1 Pro which gives wonderful results and near-perfect workflow. But it's still a lot of work to convert, and the RAW files on my hard drives take up a ton of space.
I've recently purchased the 1DMkIIN for shooting sports. Having that fast drive is great, but RAWs fill up the buffer quickly, and my memory doesn't last as long. What's worse is converting all those files in C1 Pro and the massive amount of hard drive storage required for roughly 4-times the shots I used to take with my 20D for each session.
Sure, it would be better to shoot JPG, but having to use Photoshop to crop and set white balance is a REAL pain for hundreds of shots. And I haven't yet discovered a way to easily set wb in PS. The 1-click method in C1 and the exposure slide are indispensible.
Last night I tried the DPP that came with my camera. In fact, I downloaded the upgrade from Canon first. I can see I'll still use C1 for processing RAW files, but this program is incredibly useful for processing JPGs.
1. I make a quick pass through the images to pick the ones that should be dumped, and mark them to delete quickly.
2. I then go through and use the checkmarks (1,2, and 3) to mark up to three lighting situations, usually sun, sun-behind-a-cloud, and late in the day.
3. I can then prepare a recipe for each situation, and quickly apply them to each of the checked sets. Wow, you can click to set white balance just like C1 Pro, and though I don't have the exposure slide, the brightness in combination with contrast works well. For every +3 in brightness, add +1 in contrast. Also, you can add sharpness in the recipe, just like I do in C1.
4. Bring up the Cropping tool, pass through the images adding the crop I want. At full screen, I can again see the keepers and the losers. The ones that are bad don't get a crop.
5. Then, I pass through quickly and lose all the ones with no crop. I can easily see them by the little crop icon with the thumbnail.
6. Finally, I set the batch convert for everything I've done, putting them into a subdirectory of the current one.
After discovering this, I'll still use RAW for weddings and really important stuff. But for sports, I'm switching to JPG and using DPP to process them. Today's baseball game is my first attempt. I'm sure I'll like it better in the end, and think of the space I'll be saving!
Have any of you done the same thing? Is there a better program than DPP for color-balance, sharpening, and cropping JPG images? And do you have any tips for using DPP that I might have missed in my quick one evening of learning?
Thanks!
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However, I wish it would let me slightly rotate images to straighten horizons or buildings. It's a shame that I have to go to another program just for that.