Images much sharper when viewed in Canon Digital Photo Professional??

😀 😀 😀 😀

Ha! Like it! No-one’s ‘wrong’, though as such. It’s just different ways of approaching things. 🙂

Paul

😀 😀 😀 😀

My, you use some cheap kit!

Coat, Door, Gone.

😀

My, you use some cheap kit!

Coat, Door, Gone.

…..it’s like HiFi, the “Deep” technical issues that some critic (Nerd 🙂 ) has found on an oscilloscope don’t matter once your ears are older than 22 years! “2nd bass is coming from the 3rd floorboard”. Yeah, too many air shows and rock gigs has made that into a cacophonous rumble! 🙂

Considering the fact I make a living through either being a professional musician or being responsible for sound systems costing in the region of half a million quid, I understand the sound analogy more than most! In fact pretty much my whole way of thinking about photography comes from my experiences in music, because essentially music and photography are one and the same thing; it’s just a different medium. My entire point was that the technological details of the equipment you use don’t matter. How the end image looks, however, does. Do I play an 80 quid Squire differently to my £1350 G&L L2500 bass? Yes, but not that much differently. Do I mix on a £400 Behringer desk differently to how I do on a £100,000 Digico D5? Of course, but not that much differently.

Do I think differently when taking a photo on my mobile phone to how I do when using my Canon 30D and EF 70-200L lens? Sure I do. But you guessed it… Not that much differently.

Who cares if Fuji use 12 million ‘pseudopixels’ on a sensor to get what is effectively a 6 megapixel image, and who cares how many microns apart the pixels are on a 5D compared to a 450D. What you’re dealing with is a photo, regardless of what it was taken on. 🙂

Paul

Does DPP apply sharpening when being used just as a viewer?! Blimey, will have to check that out for a start! Thanks for the input so far folks

When I load a CR2 raw image up in DPP, it has the sharpening slider defaulting to 4. I zero it personally.

Paul, I agree to a certain extent, but I have certainly noticed a difference on the telly if I load the same image in MS picture Editor Vs Windows picture n fax viewer and Vs PS CS2, even opening it in Nero shows another difference. But, my viewing for speed is MS Picture editor, my viewing for edit/print is CS2. I stick with it ‘cos I know what I’m getting and what my limitations are.

…..it’s like HiFi, the “Deep” technical issues that some critic (Nerd 🙂 ) has found on an oscilloscope don’t matter once your ears are older than 22 years! “2nd bass is coming from the 3rd floorboard”. Yeah, too many air shows and rock gigs has made that into a cacophonous rumble! 🙂

Does DPP apply sharpening when being used just as a viewer?! Blimey, will have to check that out for a start! Thanks for the input so far folks

Paul, that’s plain wrong.
If you mean that light passes through a lens and hits a CCD, then you’re right.
But, the CCD could be Fuji dual, Fovean capture or Bayer Mosaic. Each of these capture the RGB in a different way, giving different results. In addition to those three types, manufacturers have meddled with the mixture pattern of sensors eg a common Bayer pattern has twice as many green sensors than the red or blue. This particular checkerboard pattern of sensors only captures 50% of the green light that hits it and 25% of the red and blue. The pattern can be altered to give a non-even pattern which gives (say) a 60/20/20 or 40/30/30.
Also, size and quality of the sensors is important. The 8m pixel camera phone is going to have a tiny sensors, about 4 microns, a 8m pixel DSLR will have a larger CCD, the sensors will be 9 microns.
Further, each camera manufacturer writes S/w to deal with the light that has hit “Their” sensor and turn it into a code which we can then view as a picture.
Not all manufacturers have the same view as to how red should be treated for example.
Even further, the sensor is a pattern. If a similar pattern or clashing hori/vert lines are the actual subject matter, a Moire interference “Flash” will occur. So, the manufacturers design and fit the anti alias or the low-pass filter in front of the sensor. Again, each maker has a different opinion on how this filter should work…….but all of the anti alias filters soften the image and they are the prime reason why all digitally captured pictures need sharpening.

I probably didn’t make my original point very well. Technically you’re absolutely right and I know precisely how different manufacturers approach DSLR design, but frankly when you have an image open in your editing software in front of you, none of the numbers you quote really matter in the slightest. It’s just an image and needs to be treat as such, regardless of the camera used to take it. I’ve never found a huge, significant difference when editing photos from the 10 or so DSLR’s I’ve ever shot with, or from the total of something 20 digital camera I’ve used (beyond of course the obvious differnces in quality between a Nokia N70 camera phone and a Canon 5D or Nikon D2x). Or, for that matter, even scanned images. Maybe that’s because I’m more concerned with good shooting and editing technique rather than worrying about numbers. 😀

Paul

P.S. I still don’t believe what you say about DPP. 😉

Every digital SLR you will ever use, and I mean every digital SLR fundamentally works in exactly the same way. The above is absolutely not the case!

Paul

Paul, that’s plain wrong.
If you mean that light passes through a lens and hits a CCD, then you’re right.
But, the CCD could be Fuji dual, Fovean capture or Bayer Mosaic. Each of these capture the RGB in a different way, giving different results. In addition to those three types, manufacturers have meddled with the mixture pattern of sensors eg a common Bayer pattern has twice as many green sensors than the red or blue. This particular checkerboard pattern of sensors only captures 50% of the green light that hits it and 25% of the red and blue. The pattern can be altered to give a non-even pattern which gives (say) a 60/20/20 or 40/30/30.
Also, size and quality of the sensors is important. The 8m pixel camera phone is going to have a tiny sensors, about 4 microns, a 8m pixel DSLR will have a larger CCD, the sensors will be 9 microns.
Further, each camera manufacturer writes S/w to deal with the light that has hit “Their” sensor and turn it into a code which we can then view as a picture.
Not all manufacturers have the same view as to how red should be treated for example.
Even further, the sensor is a pattern. If a similar pattern or clashing hori/vert lines are the actual subject matter, a Moire interference “Flash” will occur. So, the manufacturers design and fit the anti alias or the low-pass filter in front of the sensor. Again, each maker has a different opinion on how this filter should work…….but all of the anti alias filters soften the image and they are the prime reason why all digitally captured pictures need sharpening.

Canon S/w Canon Camera……Canon know the flaws of their camera kit and build S/w to overcome them…perhaps?

Every digital SLR you will ever use, and I mean every digital SLR fundamentally works in exactly the same way. The above is absolutely not the case!

What size are you viewing the images? When I open a full size image from any of my 3 digital SLR’s or one of my other 3 digital cameras in Photoshop, it appears soft because the pixels of the original image don’t exactly match those of the screen. The software shows the image full screen, but the resolutions don’t match. DPP does this as well. You’ll generally find if you view the original photo at ‘actual pixels’, or 100% then step it down in size until you can see the whole photo, it will appear sharp, then soft one size down, sharp the next size down, then soft, etc. Once you re-size the image to something like 1024 or 1200 pixels wide, it should appear the same regardless of the program you open it in.

It certainly isn’t a colour profile or colour space problem. All a conflict of Adobe RGB or sRGB will do is affect the saturation depending on what the working space of the software you’re using is, but through changing the colour it will also affect the overall contrast. It won’t, however, make your images look softer.

Hope that helps!

Paul

Ok. When I view images taken on my Canon 30D in Canon’s own Digital Photo Professional application they appear sharper, crisper and generally better IQ than when viewed in windows explorer or even Photoshop. Is it something to do with colour profiles?

There are many potential reasons. Canon S/w Canon Camera……Canon know the flaws of their camera kit and build S/w to overcome them…perhaps?
The compression on Windows Explorer etc. will also be large, in order to show the pictures faster. Try MS office Picture Manager, IMO it is the best JPEG “Quick” viewer, it has a zoom function slider and that zoom stays in place for each picture. The basic editing functions on it are OK for snaps too.

Also, the Canon S/w could well be sharpening the image at loading. The default sharpening on the Canon DPP RAW CR2 viewer is set at 4 (Out of 10) and I always null that and do my own sharpening later in CS2, after I’ve converted the Raw to a Tiff.

It could be the workspace profiles, after much messing about, I now leave all my kit and settings to the sRGB default. I then know exactly where I am and know that if I don’t like a print then I know it isn’t the profile(s).

Are you using Raw, or Jpeg high?