Canon Community

andre-7d · ‎12-11-2022

I have TBs worth of edits in DPP3 and cannot archive them in the way that DPP4 would apply those edits. For now I'm able to use DPP3, but it will likely fail to run at some point on whatever version of Windows makes it incompatible.

Does anyone know of any tool that can convert .VRD recipe files into .DR4?

andre-7d · ‎12-14-2022

Here's how DPP3 and DPP4 store recipes in CR2 files, for those who are interested. This post is purely informational, as I haven't found the tool to automate this process yet.

You will need a fairly recent version of exiftool to run some of the examples. DO NOT run any of the commands modifying images against your actual images. Use a throw-away copy for experimentation.

Both versions of DPP store recipes in EXIF tags, under CanonVRD. DPP3 and DPP4 tags are mixed in and some have the same names and some do not.

Here's how you can see all recipe tags:

exiftool -s -a -G -H -CanonVRD:all _MG_2280.CR2

I will demonstrate DPP3 vs. DPP4 tags using RAW brightness value. If image RAW brightness value was changed in both, DPP3 and DPP4, this command will show two brightness values.

exiftool -s -a -G -H -CanonVRD:RawBrightnessAdj _MG_2280.CR2
[CanonVRD]      0x20001 RawBrightnessAdj               : 1.25
[CanonVRD]      0x0038 RawBrightnessAdj                : 2.00

The top one is for DPP4 and the bottom is for DPP3. Notice how they have the same name and different tag IDs. This means that some of the scripts circulating online may not work as intended if just the tag name is used to set the value.

Here's an example how I can take the DPP3 value and apply it against the image, so DPP4 will show the desired brightness, which in this case is 2.0.

exiftool -CanonVRD:ID-0x20001:RawBrightnessAdj=2.00 _MG_2280.CR2

If you have DPP4 open in this directory, you will see brightness jump up immediately after this command.

Tag names don't always match between DPP3 and DPP4. For example, crop tag names for DPP3 look like this.

[CanonVRD]      0x0246 CropLeft                        : 684
[CanonVRD]      0x0248 CropTop                         : 726
[CanonVRD]      0x024a CropWidth                       : 3417
[CanonVRD]      0x024c CropHeight                      : 2278

, while crop tag names for DPP4 look like these.

[CanonVRD]      0x0003 CropX                           : 100
[CanonVRD]      0x0004 CropY                           : 100
[CanonVRD]      0x0005 CropWidth                       : 3877
[CanonVRD]      0x0006 CropHeight                      : 2585

DPP4 recipes saved as standalone files are stored as EXIF values as well, so you can see all DPP4 tag values if you run the same command against a .dr4 file, like this.

exiftool -s -a -G -H -CanonVRD:all _MG_2280.dr4

You can see a full list of Canon VRD tags and meanings of some values on this page.

https://exiftool.org/TagNames/CanonVRD.html

Update 2022-12-19

Posted a thread on exiftool forums on why JSON export/import fails. JSON may be used to extract DPP3 values, remapped into using DPP4 tag IDs and then imported into .CR2 images.

https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php?topic=14288.0

This is work in progress. I will keep updating this post if anything interesting surfaces in my search, because Canon forums are messy in how they present threads.

View solution in original post

jrhoffman75 · ‎12-11-2022

Never seen such a tool.

How many of the terabytes of images will you need to re-edit? If you are concerned about being able to access them if/when DPP3 becomes un-runnable why not start the process of converting to JPEG or TIFF?

John Hoffman
Conway, NH

1D X Mark III, M200, Many lenses, Pixma PRO-100, Pixma TR8620a, Lr Classic

andre-7d · ‎12-11-2022

@jrhoffman75 wrote:
why not start the process of converting to JPEG or TIFF?

Saving RAW images in JPEG is counterproductive and in any other format, like 16-bit TIFF leaves me with the finalized images that cannot be edited in as originals can (e.g. a crop in those images will be final).

I'm not trying to get away from .CR2/.CR3, but rather to preserve countless hours that went into producing images. It's hard to believe that Canon would just consider this work disposable and not provide a path for people to migrate from DPP3 to DPP4. If I did want to go that route, I would use Adobe's DNG converter to preserve as much image data as possible.

With DPP3, at least, Canon saves the recipe in EXIF, as CanonVRD descriptor, so at least it's visible what was done. DPP4 saves recipes in binary format, so without knowing this format, there's no way to translate recipes, which is what I'm after.

jrhoffman75 · ‎12-11-2022

At this time there is no apparent move on Canon’s part to eliminate DPP3 from its catalog. If/when in the future Windows stops running the app buying a cheap used computer that runs Windows X-1 would allow continued use of DPP3.

John Hoffman
Conway, NH

1D X Mark III, M200, Many lenses, Pixma PRO-100, Pixma TR8620a, Lr Classic

ebiggs1 · ‎12-12-2022

"With DPP3, at least, Canon saves the recipe in EXIF, as CanonVRD descriptor, so at least it's visible what was done. DPP4 saves recipes in binary format, so without knowing this format, there's no way to translate recipes, which is what I'm after."

I am not a DPP3 or 4 expert like John since I use the Adobe products.but I am not unfamiliar with it either. I do use it from time to time. My thought is, if you open your older TB's worth of photos in DPP4 and save it does it not save the recipe that was applied in DPP3 in DPP4 format? Perhaps a batch process?

EB
EOS 1DX and 1D Mk IV and less lenses then before!

jrhoffman75 · ‎12-12-2022

@ebiggs1 wrote:
"With DPP3, at least, Canon saves the recipe in EXIF, as CanonVRD descriptor, so at least it's visible what was done. DPP4 saves recipes in binary format, so without knowing this format, there's no way to translate recipes, which is what I'm after."
I am not a DPP3 or 4 expert like John since I use the Adobe products.but I am not unfamiliar with it either. I do use it from time to time. My thought is, if you open your older TB's worth of photos in DPP4 and save it does it not save the recipe that was applied in DPP3 in DPP4 format? Perhaps a batch process?

My thought as well Ernie. I was going to try it but it wasn’t easy to download DPP3 since I no loner have a camera body that is compatible.

John Hoffman
Conway, NH

1D X Mark III, M200, Many lenses, Pixma PRO-100, Pixma TR8620a, Lr Classic

Waddizzle · ‎12-12-2022

I am not certain if both DPP3 and DPP4 can co-exist on the same computer.

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"The right mouse button is your friend."

jrhoffman75 · ‎12-12-2022

@Waddizzle wrote:
I am not certain if both DPP3 and DPP4 can co-exist on the same computer.

They can. They are two distinct programs.

John Hoffman
Conway, NH

1D X Mark III, M200, Many lenses, Pixma PRO-100, Pixma TR8620a, Lr Classic

ebiggs1 · ‎12-12-2022

John I no longer have DPP3 either. The newest DPP4 is way much better but even a while back I didn't see a need to keep DPP3 around. I kept CS3 and CS5 around for a while, too, but like DPP3 they just didn't get used as newer better versions came out.

EB
EOS 1DX and 1D Mk IV and less lenses then before!

ebiggs1 · ‎12-12-2022

"I am not certain if both DPP3 and DPP4 can co-exist on the same computer."

I don't even remember that. It might be why I no longer have it. I can't remember which cameras it was for but I think it's all the way back to the XTi or XT and 1 D Mk II years.

EB
EOS 1DX and 1D Mk IV and less lenses then before!

Canon Community

Does anyone know if there is a tool available to convert DPP3 recipes to the DPP4 format?