topic Re: DPP4 display sharpness and performance in Camera Software

DPP4 slow to load images, previews are blurry

woodsy — Sat, 05 Jul 2025 18:53:25 GMT

When I load a raw photo it takes a long time for the throbber in the lower right corner to stop spinning and even then the preview is not as sharp as the jpegs I export. My computer is OK spec wise apart from the fact that I use the onboard Intel video card. Will adding an Nvidia video card to my computer help with performance and sharpness of the previews?

Re: DPP4 display sharpness and performance

Waddizzle — Fri, 29 Sep 2017 21:20:33 GMT

@woodsy wrote:
When I load a raw photo it takes a long time for the throbber in the lower right corner to stop spinning and even then the preview is not as sharp as the jpegs I export. My computer is OK spec wise apart from the fact that I use the onboard Intel video card. Will adding an Nvidia video card to my computer help with performance and sharpness of the previews?

It should make a dramatic difference with DPP4. I cannot recommend a specific card, but I use a 4GB NVidia card in my gaming computer, and DPP4 runs pretty quickly. I can load files in about 2-3 seconds. I can batch process 6 files per minute.

Re: DPP4 display sharpness and performance

jrhoffman75 — Sat, 30 Sep 2017 02:06:39 GMT

But I don’t think the video card will affect sharpness. Are your DPP sharpness settings different than your in-camera JPEG settings.

Re: DPP4 display sharpness and performance

Waddizzle — Sat, 30 Sep 2017 09:16:55 GMT

@jrhoffman75 wrote:
But I don’t think the video card will affect sharpness. Are your DPP sharpness settings different than your in-camera JPEG settings.

On some systems there is a delay in displaying an image when video RAM is shared with System RAM. Images are initially displayed in a reduced resolution mode, which can make the image seem blurry and out of focus.

You would usually see the ubiquitous spinning icon when this happens. Full resolution should appear after the icon disappears, but there can be a delay for the high resolution image to actually appear. On some systems, the total delay to display a 24 MP RAW image can approach a minute.

As I have posted many times in the past, using a video card turns DPP into a different application, with one caveat. You must enable the video driver and DPP to use the video card.

Re: DPP4 display sharpness and performance

woodsy — Sat, 30 Sep 2017 14:17:13 GMT

Thanks for your replies. Yes my sharpness settings for the raws are the same as for the jpgs, things do sharpen up a bit when the throbber stops but not completely which seems a bit odd. I've order a video card with 2GB of RAM, I'll let you both know how it goes

It's not a great video card but I hope it will improve things as it exceeds what Canon recommend "Improved the display speed by using a graphics processor (GPU) to process images for preview in 64-bit OS (32-bit OS not supported). For converting and saving, and printing, the conventional CPU processing is used. To use this function, a GPU that has 1.0GB or more of built-in video memory and that supports CUDA (Compute Capability 2.0 or later) made by NVIDIA is required. "

Re: DPP4 display sharpness and performance

jrhoffman75 — Sat, 30 Sep 2017 14:38:37 GMT

I'm not sure if this affects what you are seeing, but the sharpness scale in camera goes from 0-7 in the Picture Styles.

In DPP the scale is from 1-10; if camera is aset at 3 maybe try moving DPP to 4 or 5 and comapre that with the camera JPEG.

Re: DPP4 display sharpness and performance

Waddizzle — Sat, 30 Sep 2017 15:04:31 GMT

@woodsy wrote:
Thanks for your replies. Yes my sharpness settings for the raws are the same as for the jpgs, things do sharpen up a bit when the throbber stops but not completely which seems a bit odd. I've order a video card with 2GB of RAM, I'll let you both know how it goes

The sharpness setting in the software is unrelated to the performance of the video display. Also, your photos may not be as sharp as you might think. Zooming in past 100% can make your shots look soft, too.

I hope your video card gives you the improvement you're looking for. Mine has 4GB and a separate CPU, and DPP flies compared to when it is disabled.

Re: DPP4 display sharpness and performance

woodsy — Sat, 30 Sep 2017 15:15:08 GMT

I can see the difference between raws and jpgs even when looking at a jpg processed using DPP4. Please see the screen grabs below.

EDIT: you may have to save or open the images in a new window to see the difference.

RAW

JPG converted from the above RAW

Re: DPP4 display sharpness and performance

Waddizzle — Sat, 30 Sep 2017 20:10:38 GMT

I am not going to see much of difference from screen shots, but i will take your word for it. Be sure to always be cognizant of MFD, minimum focusing distances, especially at wide apertures and relatively slow shutter speeds.

What gear [and exposure settings] were you shooting with? The STM lenses are really good. As long your shutter speed, SS, meets, or exceeds, one over your focal length, FL, that should help reduce soft images from camera shake.

1/SS <= 1/FL for a full frame camera, or 1/SS <= 1/(FL*1.6) for an APS-C camera. I use 1/SS <= 1/(FL*2)

In you are using a 100mm lens, then you want a minimum shutter speed of 1/100 on a full frame body, and 1/160 on an APS-C body, or just go with 1/200 for any body. Remember, this guideline is for a minimum shutter speed, so going a little faster doesn't hurt, although it will mean a full stop higher ISO on a full frame body. On an APS-C body, this might mean 1/3 of a stop higher ISO, which is almost negligible at all but the highest settings.

Re: DPP4 display sharpness and performance

woodsy — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 20:25:11 GMT

My video card came today but it has not helped. Image rendering times are as slow as they were before, even with the "use graphics processor for image processing" option selected it takes too long for the image to load. In fact with that option selected it is worse because any previous edits are not applied until the image has completely loaded.

Re: DPP4 display sharpness and performance

jrhoffman75 — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 20:38:10 GMT

I think the reason is that the processor in that card isn’t a high speed unit.

Re: DPP4 display sharpness and performance

6Dnewbie — Wed, 04 Oct 2017 17:40:43 GMT

I'm having somewhat the opposite problem as the original poster.

When I first open up a raw file in DPP4, the picture on the screen looks great. Nice and sharp, etc.. But when the program has finished doing whatever it does to modify the picture (during which time the small wheel icon is spinning in lower right corner), the picture ends up looking far worse than when I first opened it. Significantly less sharp most noticably and often.

This is happening with raw files taken on both my 6D and 5dmkIV.

If I open the very same pictures from my 6D on DPP3, this does not happen. The raw file looks as good, or better, once the program has finished "doing it's thing" when generating the picture ("generating high-quality image" I believe is what DPP3 says at the bottom while working on it versus spinning wheel on DPP4). It is only when I open the raw files in DPP4 that they end up looking worse. (DPP3 only applies to the pictures from the 6D, MarkIV won't work on it)

Anybody have any idea what the program is doing to make them look worse? What settings is it applying and/or changing to cause this and can I turn them off/on/disable?

One example: A picture that I took with my 6D, the waves created by the wake of a boat on a lake with still water look great when viewed on DPP3. When viewed in DPP4, the image ends up looking like someone took a paint brush with white paint on the tip and dabbed points of white on the tops of the wave crests with the frothing water glistening in the sun. DPP3 looks as it should.

Re: DPP4 display sharpness and performance

RobertTheFat — Wed, 04 Oct 2017 21:23:36 GMT

@6Dnewbie wrote:
I'm having somewhat the opposite problem as the original poster.

When I first open up a raw file in DPP4, the picture on the screen looks great. Nice and sharp, etc.. But when the program has finished doing whatever it does to modify the picture (during which time the small wheel icon is spinning in lower right corner), the picture ends up looking far worse than when I first opened it.  Significantly less sharp most noticably and often.

This is happening with raw files taken on both my 6D and 5dmkIV.

If I open the very same pictures from my 6D on DPP3, this does not happen. The raw file looks as good, or better, once the program has finished "doing it's thing" when generating the picture ("generating high-quality image" I believe is what DPP3 says at the bottom while working on it versus spinning wheel on DPP4). It is only when I open the raw files in DPP4 that they end up looking worse. (DPP3 only applies to the pictures from the 6D, MarkIV won't work on it)

Anybody have any idea what the program is doing to make them look worse? What settings is it applying and/or changing to cause this and can I turn them off/on/disable?

One example: A picture that I took with my 6D, the waves created by the wake of a boat on a lake with still water look great when viewed on DPP3.   When viewed in DPP4, the image ends up looking like someone took a paint brush with white paint on the tip and dabbed points of white on the tops of the wave crests with the frothing water glistening in the sun. DPP3 looks as it should.

Sounds as though you may have the highlight warning turned on, with the warning color set to white.

Re: DPP4 display sharpness and performance

6Dnewbie — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 17:53:39 GMT

Checked, and highlight warning is off, and when I turned it on it was displaying in red.

I am guessing the white splotchiness on that particular picture is due to the terrible sharpness that shows up after the program chews on the picture.

Practically every picture I open looks good on the sharpness when first opened, but goes soft/loses detail after the spinning wheel is done doing it's thing.

I am absolutely at a loss as to what is being applied to cause this. The pictures look fine when opened, and they look fine in DPP3, even after the program does what it does to provide the "high quality image." This is only happening in DPP4. 6D pictures, 5dmkIV, doesn't matter.

Re: DPP4 display sharpness and performance

jrhoffman75 — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 19:58:43 GMT

I’m guessing the initial view is the embedded JPEG.

I have not experienced what you are seeing.

Try switching DPP to Neutral Picture Style and check all tabs and switch off any check marks.

If that doesn’t help give Canon a call at 1-800-OK-CANON.

Re: DPP4 display sharpness and performance

Waddizzle — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 22:34:08 GMT

@6Dnewbie wrote:
Checked, and highlight warning is off, and when I turned it on it was displaying in red.

I am guessing the white splotchiness on that particular picture is due to the terrible sharpness that shows up after the program chews on the picture.

Practically every picture I open looks good on the sharpness when first opened, but goes soft/loses detail after the spinning wheel is done doing it's thing.

I am absolutely at a loss as to what is being applied to cause this. The pictures look fine when opened, and they look fine in DPP3, even after the program does what it does to provide the "high quality image." This is only happening in DPP4. 6D pictures, 5dmkIV, doesn't matter.

If you turned it on and it displayed as red, do you know what that means? Your shot is over exposed.

Re: DPP4 display sharpness and performance

6Dnewbie — Fri, 06 Oct 2017 03:03:46 GMT

I’m guessing the initial view is the embedded JPEG.

I have not experienced what you are seeing.

Try switching DPP to Neutral Picture Style and check all tabs and switch off any check marks.

If that doesn’t help give Canon a call at 1-800-OK-CANON.

Thanks. I'll switch and check all the tabs.

Good point on the embedded jpeg.

The perplexing thing is the raw files all look fine when viewed on DPP3.

I hope I can get this figured out as DPP3 will not read 5dmkiv files.

Re: DPP4 display sharpness and performance

6Dnewbie — Fri, 06 Oct 2017 03:14:54 GMT

If you turned it on and it displayed as red, do you know what that means?  Your shot is over exposed

Yes, I know what the highlight display means.

The picture I referenced as an example had no overexposed areas. I used a different picture to see what color was used to display overexposed areas. The one I used had a small blinking red area.

And again, the picture referenced in my first post, as well as many others, look just fine using DPP3. Which leads me to the assumption that it is something being applied/turned on/adjusted/etc. specific to DPP4.

I just downloaded it in mid August and haven't even adjusted any settings from default/as downloaded. But as I have looked through the settings, I can't come up with any smoking guns. However, I don't know what I don't know regarding all aspects of this program.

Re: DPP4 slow to load images, previews are blurry

vaxofek413 — Mon, 11 May 2026 13:44:44 GMT

I feel your pain with DPP4. I still use it because I love how it handles Canon colors, but the performance has always been its Achilles' heel. You mentioned that the previews are blurry for quite a while before finally snapping into focus—that’s a classic symptom of the software struggling to process the RAW data in real-time. Even on high-end machines, it seems to crawl compared to something like Lightroom.

I’ve noticed a similar lag in my own workflow, especially when I’m pulling files off my storage server. I actually recently upgraded my networking setup with some new expansion modules to support a 32-Gigabit throughput, thinking that maybe the network bottleneck was the primary culprit for my slow load times. While the raw data moves across my local network at lightning speeds now, DPP4 still takes its sweet time rendering those previews. It really highlights that even with top-tier network devices and massive bandwidth, poorly optimized software can still bring a high-end system to a halt. It’s frustrating when your hardware is ready to fly, but the app is stuck in the mud.

Have you tried checking if hardware acceleration is enabled in the settings, or does that seem to make the stability worse on your particular rig?

Re: DPP4 slow to load images, previews are blurry

wq9nsc — Mon, 11 May 2026 14:56:44 GMT

Depending upon the computer, using the "prioritize speed" option under preferences in DPP may reduce laggy behavior but in my experience it will have no significant speed impact with faster setups.

I experimented some last year with my previous workstation and there was a slight but not really significant improvement in speed when selecting a RAW image or switching between the main and cropping tools tabs when set to speed priority. DPP's note about this option is pretty cryptic stating that prioritizing speed may make noise more noticeable in some images but didn't state whether this drop in quality carries over to when the file is actually processed into a JPG file. I tried both setups (exiting and restarting DPP each time so that the changed preference took effect) using some images from my 1DX III taken at 51,200 ISO and even highly magnified I could not see any difference in image quality and the file sizes were exactly the same. So from my brief experiment, it would appear that the preference doesn't impact exported JPG quality so it might be worth trying for some setups to improve speed.

With my current workstation, a selected CR3 file takes under one second to go from the blurred large "wheel" indicator to the detailed small wheel indicator. Switching from the main tool tab to the crop tab is well under 2 seconds for the same behavior and I can live with this although faster would always be better. CR2 files are easier for computers to handle and those were lightning fast on both of my prior workstations.

I think diminishing returns will set it pretty quickly with DPP and hardware upgrades. I monitored resource utilization while doing stuff with files on my current workstation and loading a RAW file or switching tabs on the tool palette never sends CPU utilization over 3%. Batch processing CR3 files results in a less than one second spike never exceeding 13% CPU utilization but drops to mid single digits for over 90% of the 6 to 7 second per file processing time. The GPU utilization never moves from zero utilization in either editing or batch processing files.

I am using a HP Z8 G5 with twin 28 core Xeon CPUs and a pair of Nvidia Ada 4000 series workstation cards. A less equipped PC is going to be slower BUT DPP never comes close to utilizing the available resources of this PC. It would be interesting to see what CPU utilization looks like on other configurations; if it is going high then closing all other programs while working with DPP would probably help.

And even on a fast workstation, DPP's old memory leakage issue is very much present. I have a total of 512 GB of memory (256 per CPU) and after a couple of hours DPP will increase usage to the 10 to 12 GB range from its usual 2 to 3 GB size and becomes sluggish even though only a fraction of available memory is in use. So it is worthwhile to exit and restart DPP every couple of hours during long editing sessions (or as soon as you notice it becoming more sluggish). I have been using DPP since 2005 and this memory leak has been a consistent issue for over two decades now 😞 For this same memory leak reason, if you are through editing once you start batch processing then exit the DPP program and let the batch run by itself.

Rodger