Does Canon sabotage image quality for Lightroom users?

[helloandyhihi]

In Adobe's Lightroom forum, I noted that when I bring an image into Digital Photo Professional 4, I get better grain, detail, sharpness, and contrast than in Lightroom.

An Adobe employee replied, "Most camera companies like to reserve their in-camera processing (their “secret sauce”) for their own software, like Canon does with DPP, and will not share it with other applications like Lightroom."

But DPP isn't a practical everyday application for me. As a freelance journalist, I usually come back with hundreds of images and I bring them into Lightroom by default. I quickly rank and select images, caption, perform minimal edits and export 3-20 at a time.

Unlike Lightroom, DPP is more about editing one-off images. It's not realistic for managing so many photos so quickly. 

• Is it true that Canon isn't helpful to Adobe when it tries to support Canon cameras?
• If so, why wouldn't Canon acknowledge that Lightroom is vital to many of its users and help us achieve the best quality possible? 

Is there a way to achieve the wonderful grain, detail, sharpness, and contrast that comes through upon import to DPP in Lightroom? 

[In the Adobe forum, people recommended that I create presets to mimic DPP. But, also because I'm a journalist, I only make the most minimal adjustments to images, I'm not skilled at fine-tuning things in Lightroom. I have tried, but I definitely have not been able to create such a preset.] [I shoot with a 5D Mark IV]

[Waddizzle]

No.  Why should Canon share their intellectual property with third parties?  Does KFC share their secret recipe with other fast food chains?  Of course, not.  This post is utterly ridiculous.  Expect a Moderator to delete your link.

[helloandyhihi]

I don't understand this point of view. Shouldn't Canon's attitude be that they want to help their customers get the most out of their equipment?

[Waddizzle]

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@helloandyhihi wrote:

I don't understand this point of view. Shouldn't Canon's attitude be that they want to help their customers get the most out of their equipment?

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First and foremost, I do not represent Canon, nor do I speak for Canon.  I am Canon user expressing my opinions.

Canon does help their customers get the most out of their equipment.  They offer free software, DPP.  

Does Adobe share their intellectual properties with their rivals?  Of course, not. Good-bye and good luck.

[helloandyhihi]

Well, I know more than a few pro photographers. Nearly all use Lightroom. None use DPP. Like I said, for the way I shoot, it's just not practical.

Companies should meet their clients where they are, not push them to use software that doesn't work they way they need it to.

[RobertTheFat]

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@helloandyhihi wrote:

Well, I know more than a few pro photographers. Nearly all use Lightroom. None use DPP. Like I said, for the way I shoot, it's just not practical.

Companies should meet their clients where they are, not push them to use software that doesn't work they way they need it to.

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Lightroom's principal advantage over DPP is in cataloguing, not in editing. Making global changes to multiple shots, especially to the degree allowed to journalists, is perfectly feasible in DPP. And if you did edit your shots in DPP, I see no obvious reason why you couldn't still catalogue them in LR, if that's your strong preference.

Pro photographers tend to use what everybody else uses (a tendency not unique to photographers), even if it isn't necessarily the best solution for a given individual. But ultimately there's no ideal substitute for looking at options and deciding, on the evidence, what works best for you.

[ebiggs1]

"Lightroom's principal advantage over DPP is in cataloguing, not in editing."

Total nonsense Robert. You simply do not know how to use LR if you think truly that.

"Pro photographers tend to use what everybody else uses ..., even if it isn't necessarily the best solution for a given individual."

Again total nonsense.  People that make a living with their cameras use what makes them money.  And generally that is the "best".  Hallmark had all the money in the world.  They could use whatever they wanted but they like almost every other large and small pro shop, they chose LR/PS.

I can almost see the OP's point, if everybody wants LR/PS why not licence Adobe or whatever legal term and offer assistance.

Even though it is free most people don't bother to d/l DPP4 or let alone use it.

[romanthoney]

Lightroom is no longer the Go to for photo editing. Atleast not as dominant. .I do think the CR3 files from canon are not fully covered in LR. I use to dpp for initial processing. Its been shown alot of what adobe does is sort of rigged in the metadata for Cr3

[ebiggs1]

"Lightroom is no longer the Go to for photo editing."

This is a very old thread guys but LR/PS are to go to standards and they will be for the foreseeable future. If you think not you simply don't get out enough.

[wq9nsc]

I have the full Adobe creative suite BUT I use DPP most of the time because it is fast and simple when dealing with 100s of images.  I will often shoot two high school soccer games in a row using a pair of 1 series bodies and will come back with several hundred images and I can easily crunch through these in DPP in a short time.

Typical workflow for me is to dump the images to the solid state drive in my workstation reserved for current images, I use the ethernet port on my 1 series for fast transfer without having to fool with card removal.  I then use the select all option and apply a basic recipe based upon the sport to the entire folder for that game, I have recipes saved in DPP for different sports and it takes about 20 seconds for my workstation to apply that recipe to all of the files.  After the recipe is applied I use quick check to quickly review the photos and mark the possibles using the checkmark command in DPP.   I then select checkmarked photos only for the edit window and go through them sequentially generally applying a quick crop and sometimes a fine adjustment to shadow or highlight but all the basics are in the recipe I apply.  For me this workflow is much faster than dealing with Adobe which I use only when I rarely need to make severe edits, otherwise DPP takes care of what I need and it does have a far better RAW converter than Adobe.  You will find the same is true with Nikon, Sony, etc. because as noted previously companies don't share proprietary information.  If they allowed Adobe or other software makers access then they might as well just send the same information to their competitors in the imaging field.

Rodger