Following is my perspective, and I am certainly willing to believe differently from others with better knowledge and perspectives than mine.

First, I doubt if many people on FM actually understand the electronics and algorithms used to process the signals and bits. I certainly know I don’t.

Second, I don’t think there is “truth” out there. By that I mean I don’t believe the image presented by DPP for Canon or NX2 for Nikon is inherently more “accurate” than anything else. The Canon and Nikon engineers are manipulating the data to what they believe is “best” – most pleasing or whatever. If you like what DPP does better than ACR that is fine – I just don’t believe you can state with confidence it is “more accurate.” They all play with white balance data, colorimetric interpretation, gamma correction etc. to arrive at an image they want.

I have been using ACR 4.5 since it came out. I have used my GretagMacbeth ColorChecker with my camera (under both 2800 degree K and 6500 degree K lighting) to generate an ACR profile for my camera (it’s pretty easy to do).

Now in ACR 4.5 I have the following profiles:
• ACR 2.4
• ACR 4.4
• Adobe Standard beta 1
• Camera Faithful beta 1
• Camera Landscape beta 1
• Camera Neutral beta 1
• Camera Portrait beta 1
• Camera Standard beta 1
• And a custom profile for my camera that I made

And if that were not to my liking, I could tweak any of these profiles to make them do just about anything (certainly from a color perspective) that I would want.

I generally prefer the ACR custom profile for my camera over the others, and over DPP - but I have the flexibility to do just about anything I want to in the ACR profiles.

For more info on this see:
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/DNG_Profiles

Specifically see:
- Tutorial 5 "Automatic Adjustments Using a Color Checker"
- Tutorial 6 "Dual-Illuminant Automatic Adjustments Using a Color Checker"

If you have a different perspective glad to hear it!

JimR

I do think that DPP is a very good converter, and I use it quite often. However, for me there is not that big a difference in color, or anything else between DPP and ACR.



On the left is a tiff converted with ACR 4.4 profile applied. In the middle is a tiff from ACR with 'camera standard' as profile, and on the right is a tiff from DPP with 'standard' shot profile applied.

To my eyes at least, there is only a minuscule difference in color between the middle and last conversion. Definitely NOT something to write home about.
Using the ACR 4.4 profile provides a less saturated image, and is somewhat faded in a sense, but I use this quite often to convert neutral colors.

Which is better, for me, or my workflow?

I use both quite often actually. On my Laptop I use DPP mainly, and do not do much editing on it, as I hate LCD screens. (And no, I have an excellent laptop thank you. But CRT is better to my eye.)
On the PCs I use ACR, as I go straight into editing from there, and much easier to do that with ACR as apposed to DPP.

I've found that depending on the file in hand, raw converters are not equal. So either you keep the entire arsenal of available converters and try them all on the file to see which produces the best result, (this is what I used to do a few years ago), or for sake of simplicity, just use one converter that gives you very decent results for most of the cases, DPP. ACR can be better for some files, others will look better when converted with Bibble, but DPP will always provide you with at least a "good" conversion. I've noticed that the latest versions do not keep the highlights well and there has always been a problem with bright light sources that produces color moire. Canon has also a hidden gem that many people seem to completely ignore, RIT.

RIT?

jrsubs wrote:
RIT?

RIT = RAW Image Task via Zoom Browser. On a prior RAW thread, I think both Edwardkaraa and I concluded that RIT did much better with whites.

Thanks. I just did some reading but can't pick why they make/made two separate products: I must have missed RIT with my 20D/30D's, will have a look.

I have not done and AB comparison yet but I usually convert to DNG file when importing to lightroom and adjust in lightroom. I just dinked with some CR2 files I have around and am totally impressed with the quality of the DPP software - I have not used canon software since my 10d years ago.

This definitely warrants further investigation.

Not to hijack the thread, but do you folks think that the LR sharpening is not that good??

I for some reason think that even BBPro (in addition to DPP) are better at sharpening. I am not good with PS3 so don't tell me to use that... please...

-- V

New profiles in LR are on par with C1.