DPP 4 or photoshop elements or adobe lightroom

[Wayne3]

Hi everyone, 

I have a newbie question for you.  I have recently started editing photos with Canon digital photo professional that came with my Rebel.  It seems to do everything I want it to do with the exception of maybe ease of editing one particular section of a photo.  Would it be worth it to move up to photoshop elements or adobe lightroom?  Would I get that much bang for my buck?  Thanks!

Wayne

[Waddizzle]

Another app I have started playing with stacking images is called Sequator.

[Wayne3]

Thanks I will check it out. I have never heard of Sequtor before.  Wayne

[jrhoffman75]

StarStax is another program; used for creating star trails. For example - take 30 shots 1 second part and StarStax will interpolate to create trails.

Rick's software recommendations are right on.

A difference between LR and DxO is that LR is a subscription model - $10/month. Some folks don't like that.

An example of what StarStax will do.

[Wayne3]

Nice pic!

[BurnUnit]

If you're just getting started with RAW editing, don't jump into the deep-end and try to learn it all at once. You can be easily overwhelmed by it. Try taking it in small bites over a longer period of time to prevent getting discouraged. The workflow will start making more sense to you and you'll find that you're spending less time to get better results. Getting the shot as right as possible in the camera is the biggest favor you can do for yourself.

If you need a little motivation here's an example of just how much you can do with RAW editing to salvage the horribly underexposed shot (upper middle). This was done with DxO OpticsPro but you should be able to get similar results with LR or DPP4 when you start to get more familiar with the workings of it.

[Wayne3]

Thanks BurnUnit, 

Wow, great pic!  I think I probably am moving a bit too quickly and then forgetting half of it. Not biting off too much at one time is probably good advice. I just went to an entry level photography workshop, and the presenter gave what I now understand is pretty standard advice. Just put your camera on aperture priority, and do nothing but play with depth of field for a week or so. Just that one step. Then when you are used to that, move to manual and play with shutter speed. Just babysteps. It has been fun learning so far. 

Wayne 

[alexpilion]

Hello Wayne,

as a fomer starter, 5 years ago, I can definetely reccomend DPP; it is plenty of tutorials / lessons video from canon on how to do the most common things and also it come for free once you bought a Canon camera.

I appreciated a lot that almost every Canon lenses I own has a ready-to-go image correction profile I can easily apply within DPP, except for the an old, but very light and versatile, EF35-80mm f/4-5.6 III

Anyway it depends on your need, for example I recently started to work with focus stacking and I realized that with DPP this is not really possible, despite it has been addedd recently, I think with 4.11 it can be used only if you shot a sequence of pictures with a specific focus bracketing function which is available only on few camera models and restricted to selected lenses.

Please Canon can you add the focus stacking to any set of images taken, i.e. with Canon Camera Connect and manual focus set, that would be really helpful for macro photography lovers

I found  this page, despite being over 3 years old, very useful:

https://www.canonwatch.com/canon-digital-photo-professional-dpp-4-tutorials/

[jrhoffman75]

https://cpn.canon-europe.com/content/product/canon_software/dpp_video_tutorials.do

[LittleGuy]

One advantage Lightroom has is the catalog feature.  I geotag all pictures.   The filter capabilities to find particular locations or subjects is awesome.  DPP and Photoshop / Bridge offer roughly the same capabilities and is designed for graphic artists.  Photographers with lots if images from around the world like the cataloging capabilities.  Adobe isn't the only one with cataloging capabilities although they did most of the pioneering.  Other software vendors now have cataloging capabilities. 

[kjacobs4242]

I use DPP, and it works great. Noise reduction on Raw files is automatic when you edit. If you have a really hi ISO with lots of noise, do this. Convert to JPG, make a copy, put back into DPP edit and you can really smooth the BG out, works well on blurred BGs, where noise is most obvious. You will have to convert and save to JPG again to save the creamy BG. I move both into GIMP and mask the sharp subject into the smoothed copy (with a slightly blurred subject). Here is the original that was really good enuff, and a side by side blown up to 200% to show the difference. The original was about an 80% crop. R5, RF 100-500, ISO 2000, 1/200 sec. I did NOT mask the orig, did the blow side by side to show what is possible if needed.  Original, 80%b4 and after masking, 200%