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

andre-7d
Contributor

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?

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

andre-7d
Contributor

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

31 REPLIES 31

The installer removed DPP3 when I installed DPP4.

--------------------------------------------------------
"The right mouse button is your friend."

I installed these two a few times together and I never saw that happen on Windows. Maybe the installer behaves differently on other platforms, however.


@Waddizzle wrote:

The installer removed DPP3 when I installed DPP4.


Screenshot 2022-12-15 090032.jpgScreenshot 2022-12-15 090945.jpg

DPP4 and DPP3 running simultaneously on W10 machine.

John Hoffman
Conway, NH

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

I think I installed it as an “check for updates” inside DPP3, which might be DPP3 was removed.

--------------------------------------------------------
"The right mouse button is your friend."

andre-7d
Contributor

Can we please keep this thread on topic? It's a very specific question about migrating DPP3 recipes to DPP4 and I'm still hoping somebody can share any insights on just that.

One more off topic reply. This is how one may run an old version of Windows with DPP 3 forever. Even if the recipes could be converted, they would not produce identical results on a newer version of DPP.

I have an old portable windows license not tied to any particular hardware. Since it is not tied to particular hardware, it will run in a virtual machine. This means that a disk image of that windows machine can be run on another newer machine with no need to ever upgrade that version of windows. I use qemu on Debian Linux for that purpose. There is also a free to download version of VMware Player for windows or VMware Fusion for macOS.

I suggest creating such a disk image either by copying a running windows machine that has a full price license for some version of Windows, or else installing Windows to a virtual machine. I no longer run Windows since I have retired, but still have a Windows virtual machine on my Debian Linux desktop and I have VMware Fusion on my iMac.

Since this old version of Windows will stop getting security updates, it will be necessary to keep the the virtual machine from accessing the internet by configuring it for local network only.

The Wine program worked for running a very old version of DPP on Linux before qemu existed, but I no longer use Wine and and no longer remember which version of DPP. But, that still might be made to work and would not need so much disk space or RAM or backup storage or network configuration.

https://cam.start.canon/en/S002/manual/html/UG-04_EditImage_0190.html

"

  • Recipes are not compatible between Digital Photo Professional 4 and earlier versions.
  • In Digital Photo Professional 4, images with recipe files from earlier versions are displayed using the settings at the time of shooting.
  • In earlier versions, images with recipe files from Digital Photo Professional 4 are also displayed using the settings at the time of shooting.

"

This is great information John. Not everyone saves and applies recipes; many are one each edits. If they have a concern about DPP3 not being available in the future come up with a solution to run working Windows or start re-editing DPP3 images in DPP4.

John Hoffman
Conway, NH

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

My qemu command line for when I needed to run DPP under Linux:

qemu-system-x86_64 --enable-kvm -cpu host -smp cores=2,threads=4 -vga std -m 8G -boot once=d -rtc base=localtime -drive file=/home/jrm/warehouse_dd/warehouse_2012dec30_win7.bin,format=raw -name old_warehouse -enable-kvm -net user -net nic -cdrom /dev/cdrom

I used dd to create an image of the disk on an old Windows machine.

 

ebiggs1
Legend
Legend

"Can we please keep this thread on topic?"

 

This is "on topic", you may not like the answers but this is what we can come up with to accomplish your request.

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

andre-7d
Contributor

@ebiggs1

It's like in that joke where a guy was looking for their lost keys under a light pole. A passer by asked the guy if he lost the keys there and the guy said: "No, but there's more light here".

I'm looking for specific information and if it's not too much to ask, I would like this thread to focus DPP3/DPP4 recipes. I mean no disrespect for all who contributed, but I'd rather receive no replies than to hear about another way to run DPP3 forever.

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