DPP4: "Target file does not exist"

[Kumba43]

Hi, per the topic title, in Canon Digital Photo Professional 4, when I have one or more images selected in a folder on my filesystem and I click on the "Tools" menu and then any number of the items there, such as "Start Compositing tool", "Start HDR compositing tool", "Start HDR PQ compositing tool", "Start Dual Pixel RAW Optimizer", etc, I get an error dialog popping up that simply says "Target file does not exist".  I have searched online and cannot find any explanations as to what this error is referring to or means.  AI has no clue and just starts hallucinating what it thinks are potential solutions, so that's a dead end.

All of my images were shot on a Canon EOS R6, all in RAW format (file extension is *.CR3), and my OS is Windows 10.  I even tried moving some of the files to an NTFS volume, as my photo scratch volume runs ReFS, but that didn't change the outcome.

After some poking around, I did get the "Start HDR compositing tool" item to work, but only in a folder where I have non-HDR images stored, so it is kind of pointless there.  It will not work in a folder on any images containing the "HDR" tag (I shot several using HDR PQ mode, so I have image triplets of +2, 0, and -2 exposure in this folder).  I've tried adding the toolbar buttons for these as well, but no dice.

Has anyone figured out how to get these features to work?  E.g., what are the necessary preconditions?  I feel like this is a failure on Canon's part to actually do QA checks on their own software during development.  This should be an easy bug to catch, unless the developers primarily work on non-Windows based development systems and don't bother to test Windows releases?  If it is not a bug, then wtf am I missing, because it is incredibly non-obvious, whatever it is.

Thanks!

[jrhoffman75]

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@Kumba43 wrote:

Hi, per the topic title, in Canon Digital Photo Professional 4, when I have one or more images selected in a folder on my filesystem and I click on the "Tools" menu and then any number of the items there, such as "Start Compositing tool", "Start HDR compositing tool", "Start HDR PQ compositing tool", "Start Dual Pixel RAW Optimizer", etc, I get an error dialog popping up that simply says "Target file does not exist".  I have searched online and cannot find any explanations as to what this error is referring to or means.  AI has no clue and just starts hallucinating what it thinks are potential solutions, so that's a dead end.

All of my images were shot on a Canon EOS R6, all in RAW format (file extension is *.CR3), and my OS is Windows 10.  I even tried moving some of the files to an NTFS volume, as my photo scratch volume runs ReFS, but that didn't change the outcome.

After some poking around, I did get the "Start HDR compositing tool" item to work, but only in a folder where I have non-HDR images stored, so it is kind of pointless there.  It will not work in a folder on any images containing the "HDR" tag (I shot several using HDR PQ mode, so I have image triplets of +2, 0, and -2 exposure in this folder).  I've tried adding the toolbar buttons for these as well, but no dice.

Has anyone figured out how to get these features to work?  E.g., what are the necessary preconditions?  I feel like this is a failure on Canon's part to actually do QA checks on their own software during development.  This should be an easy bug to catch, unless the developers primarily work on non-Windows based development systems and don't bother to test Windows releases?  If it is not a bug, then wtf am I missing, because it is incredibly non-obvious, whatever it is.

Thanks!

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Screen Shot 2026-08-25 at 08.42.49 AM.png

Looks like DPP4 is not supporting HDR PQ for the R6.

[johnrmoyer]

For the DPRAW tool, if the CR3 file does not contain DPRAW data, then you will get that message.

[Kumba43]

Hmm, that seems bizarre, because the camera has support for HDR PQ (I turned it on in the settings for several of my images).  However, none of the functions in the Tools menu seem to work, including the Dual Pixel RAW Optimizer, which should work across all of their camera bodies.  I was running an older version, though, ~4.20.*.  I will attempt to update to 4.21.* and see if that changes anything, but I am not feeling very optimistic about it.

[jrhoffman75]

You can give Canon support a call at 1-800-OK-CANON. 

[Kumba43]

And nope, updating to v4.21.30.0, which was released at the end of July, did not fix it.  Same bloody error message regardless of what button I click in the toolbar or in the Tools menu.  It feels like they have a single error handler with a generic failure clause, and all program actions use it, lol.  I expect better from Canon on this.

[Kumba43]

See, how am I supposed to know that from such a generic error message?  They're not even using an error dialog, just a "Warning" dialog.  It's bad software design, in my opinion.  If a RAW file is missing some required data element, the program should either disable the control widget or at least give a descriptive error message telling me why it can't do a thing.

When I shot my images, I turned on HDR bracketing, enabled HDR PQ, and took triplet shots of what I was shooting at.  I've already used other external software to merge the triplets into a final HDR image, but I wanted to see what DPP4 could do here (in case it can do better than the other software), and I'm finding out it's like having a car with no start/ignition button.

I guess I can try calling Canon Support and see if they have any solutions.  Or, at a bare minimum, get a ticket created (hopefully) so this gets fixed in a future release.

[Kumba43]

Yup, doing that now.  Thanks!

[johnrmoyer]

For compositing images in DPP, I use the CR3 files. It seems to me that is the advantage to using DPP.

With HDR-PQ enabled in DPP, I cannot save a 16 bit TIFF. I use 16 bit TIFF when compositing in other software. 

The HDR PQ with 10 bits seems to me to have good dynamic range, but cannot be displayed by all software. 

it would be nice if DPP could save PQ colors in a 16 bit TIFF with  12 or 14 bits of dynamic range.

[Kumba43]

Yeah, I talked with a support rep and he was looking through the manual, but could not find a reference to the specific error message.  He said he would attempt to reproduce it later with an actual camera and the software, and also query the software engineers.  I offered to send screenshots and a sample file if it helps.

My general take is those buttons are looking for some component or element within the file container that they need to verify, possibly for compatibility reasons, failing, and falling back to an incredibly generic error message.  E.g., the reaon Dual Pixel RAW Optimizer doesn't seem to work on any of my images is because my camera apparently does not support that feature.  So I assume if it did, and if it were enabled, it would place a data element within the file stating "hey, I'm a dual pixel RAW file".

I think the HDR cases are more interesting.  As you found, apparently the software does not support HDR PQ from the EOS R6 Mk I (why?), so the standard "HDR compositing tool" fails because it sees a data element indicating the file was shot with HDR PQ, and it can't work with that?  Whereas the "HDR PQ compositing tool" doesn't support my camera, so it looks and see that I have that exact unsupported camera model, so it fails as well.

Both the standard "Compositing tool" and "HDR compositing tool" will work if I have a non-HDR image selected.  I found there's a different kind of HDR function that seems to do something different than HDR PQ in another menu, so my guess is "HDR compositing tool" is expecting images produced by that function, hence it fails if it see the HDR PQ data element in the file.  However, I did not shoot HDR with that other HDR function, so I'm effectively prevented from using DPP to do HDR compositing, unless a future release of DPP4 adds support for the R6 Mk I.

So, for now, it's back to a mix of Affinity Photo v2, DxO PhotoLab 9, and RawTherapee.  Since I use an EF-S 17-55mm lens w/ the R6, DxO isn't capable of doing lens geometry corrections because DxO has so far refused to test that specific body/lens combination.  So I use PhotoLab for the DeepPRIME XD3 denoising stuff, export to linear DNG, then RawTherapee to apply geometry corrections for my camera/lens combination and export to 16-bit TIFF, and then I've been using Affinity to do both the HDR compositing and the panorama stitching after getting fed up with Hugin's UI and general weirdness.