Canon DPP clone stamp takes minutes to start up

[ernest]

The latest DPP version I use is 3.14.15 (3.14.15.2), I use it on an iMac 3.06 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, with 4Gb memory and OS X 10.9.3.

When I want to use the clone stamp tool I have to wait several minutes (2-3) until it gets enabled and I can zoom in 100% and start using it. This has been going on for several releases now, same as the out of memory bug.

[ebiggs1]

Easy fix?   Get Photoshop Elements.  

[ernest]

Not the reply I was looking for but thanks anyway.

Posting here I am hoping Canon will notice and take action to correct the problems. There is no way I know of on how to submit software bugs or get Canon support for their software products. 

[ebiggs1]

I am sorry but this is a public forum and I doubt Canon will see you request.  This forum just has some company moderators.

You probably need to go to customer service.

[Stephen]

Hi ernest!

We'd suggest contacting Canon in your country (Canada) for support. We've not noticed any issues here in the US with the clone stamp tool using DPP on our iMacs on OSX 10.9. Canon Canada's website is www.canon.ca

Thanks and have a great day!

[ernest]

My camera is out of warranty plus there seems ot be no way to file a bug/ticket for Canon software.

I used the Canon USA forum as it has a much larger user base.

[TCampbell]

Along the lines of "not the reply you were looking for".... if you're beyond the capabilities of iPhoto (e.g. if you're shooting RAW) then invest $79 in Aperture (via the Apple "App Store").  The "clone stamp" is a function of Aperture's "Retouch" brush (which has a "repair" mode and "clone" mode... the "clone" mode functionality is identical.

Aperture is the program that drove Adobe to write Lightroom.  While Lightroom is more popular because it's available on both Mac and PC and on the PC it's pretty much the only program that does what it does -- it was designed to compete with Aperture.  Aperture is written by Apple and thus only available on Mac.  

The advantages of both Aperture and Lightroom is that they are VERY good and efficient at the workflow of handing entire shoots worth of images very quickly.  Whereas DPP is generally editing and adjusting one image at a time and DPP isn't an image management app, Aperture does do image library management (including "offline" images because it was designed to work for photographers who shoot so much that it's not practical to keep all the images on a connected hard drive.  

When you connect the camera (or memory card) it can import all the images at once, apply basic RAW processing to all of them via a camera profile (it knows appoximately how much default adjustment for things like sharpening, or noise, or color, etc. would be necessary as a default starting point).  As you make adjustments to a single image, you can tell it to apply those adjustments to a range of images (e.g. if I adjust white balance... I don't need to do that to one image at a time.  I can correct just one image, then select a range of images and tell it to apply the same adjustment to all of them.)

While I use Aperture, I have a friend who got a copy of Lightroom which was included free when he purchased some other product.  As it was "free" and he had never heard of it, he never even bothered to install it or try it.  He was doing everything one image at a time... the old way.  I encouraged him to install and learn Lightroom.  The following week he was very excited about how much easier (and frankly more powerful) Lightroom was vs. his one-image-at-a-time editing process.

[ernest]

Tim, thank you for your long response. 

I have both Aperture and Lightroom. They are both very good. But I need to use DPP too.

What I would like is for Canon to fix DPP,as well as the long standing memory leak and other bugs. I'd like them to be as responsive as Fujifilm is to their user base.

Frankly, Canon's response or lack of it is appaling. For instance, on my Canon 6D deleting an image takes seconds. It is now more than a year that they released the camera, there was at least one firmware release, yet this problem persists, along with a few other more important ones. But this is not about the 6D.

[TCampbell]

I don't own the same model iMac... but when I use the clone-stamp tool in DPP (something I don't normally use DPP to do but I fired it up just to test an image), the user-interface response is instant.  There is no noticeable delay.

Does the application "pinwheel" when you try to activate the clone-stamp tool?

A developer can usually only fix an issue if they can replicate it.  As your computer is a Core 2 DUO, it's a fairly old machine (although I do have a laptop I could use to test which actually does have a Core 2 DUO).  

There is a way to find out what it's doing... but it helps to be a developer to understand both how to do it and how to interpret the results.  Macs have a built-in tool called "dtrace" (dynamic tracer) which is able to tell you what an application is actually doing it all times.  Developers use the tool as a way to optimize the performance of an application because it gives them visible at run-time which allows them to catch a program doing something inefficient.

[ernest]

No it does not "pinwheel", it just waits a long time, minutes, whereas in previous releases of DPP it was much, much faster.

And my iMac is prety fast with all other editing apps, including Aperture and Lightroom, which are huge apps.

Like I said, I posted here hoping to bring them to the attention of Canon software engineers.