For a long time, I simply couldn’t find a method of RAW conversion that worked for me. I’ve tried Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw, but was always left with this ugly green/yellow tinge I simply couldn’t remove. Even after mucking around for hours, my jpegs always looked better. Non photographers can probably tune out now, this won’t be of much interest to you. :)
Everyone knows the obvious benefits of RAW (if you don’t check out the numerous web articles) so finding a method of converting from RAW that works for you is important. I’ve finally found one that I’m happy with, giving me all the great benefits of RAW, with a workflow almost as simple as working with jpegs. This method is only suitable for Canon CR2 RAW files as I’m not too sure about Nikon.
You’ll need the CD of software that came with your Canon camera and will need to install Digital Photo Professional (DPP) as well as the Canon RAW Codec. If you can’t find your disc, tough luck, Canon, for some reason, don’t believe in a freely downloadable version of the software. But keep faith, there are sneaky ways around it! You can download a REALLY old version of DPP here and then go to Canon’s website and download the updates for it here. The Canon RAW Codec can be found here (enter your camera’s information there and wait for the options to come up for the software downloads).
You’ll also need Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Bridge as well. I’m using CS3, the instructions for you might be slightly different depending on your version, but it should roughly be the same.
Ok, so this is it. It goes, Bridge -> DPP -> Photoshop
Open up Bridge and you’ll end up with a nice folder structure showing your photos and previews and EXIF data (you can move all the panels around to get something that suits you).
Note how the colours in the photos seem crummy and yellow (seriously, Soph doesn’t have Jaundice!).
You’ll need to change the File Type Associations of Bridge by going to Edit -> Preferences -> File Type Associations. Click on the little downwards arrow next to Canon Camera RAW and select “Browse”. Go to the folder in which you installed DPP and select DPPViewer. Click ok and you should get something that looks like this.
What this means is that whenever you double click on a CR2 file in Bridge, it’ll now use DPP to open it instead of Photoshop (the default action in Bridge).
So find a nice CR2 file you want to work on (no, I’m not going to send you any photos of my cute girl!) and double click. DPP should open up and you’ll see something like this (click to open full size).
Change the brightness, white balance and picture style to what you want (ideally, match the conditions you are shooting in). Also, bump up the sharpness to around 4 or 5, something which should give you a nice presharpen. Hopefully, at this point, you’ll notice that the colours in this version are truer than the CR2 version you see in Bridge. It’s subtle, but you should clearly notice the difference in the hair.
Once you’re happy with this, simply click Alt + P and the file will open up in Photoshop as a high res TIFF as below (click for full size). The export resolution of DPP can be adjusted by going to Tools -> Preferences -> General Settings -> Default Value of Output Resolution inside DPP itself. Mine is set to 300 DPI, your’s is your choice!
The file will open as a 16-bit TIFF in Photoshop and will be placed in a temporary folder until you choose to save it. Do NOT edit the image and then simply click save, it won’t work. Save the image where you want it to go first and then edit. I generally downsample my images to 8-bit before I save (unless it’s a file where those extra 8-bits become useful), simply to save drive space. I also save the files as PSDs so I can continue using Photoshop layers. You can then go and close the DPP Viewer of you want. For some reason, it doesn’t appear in the taskbar but by pressing Alt + Tab you should be able to get to it. Make sure that when you close the DPP Viewer file, you save the changes. This means that the little XMP file that gets put in your folder with the CR2 files gets modified and the next time you open the CR2 file, the software already knows what changes you made the first time.
So that’s it! It might take you 10 or 15 minutes to set up, but once you’ve got it going, it’ll hopefully be a steady and successful workflow! Feel free to make any suggestions in the comments which might make things easier or better (or point out that I’m an idiot if you’ve got a better method!).
Why not just do the WB adjustment in ACR Lucky? Works for me.
What do you do about colour profiles mate?
boris, it just doesn’t work for me! the colours never come out right and it looks like crap regardless of how much tweaking i do. maybe it’s my camera and ACR, i just don’t know!
joel, i use sRGB most of the time because 99% of my stuff ends up on the web where sRGB is the most supported colour profile. but if you’re doing fine art prints and so on, you can probably work in another one. i know that photoking (where i’ve gotten large prints done) has their own colour profile which you can download off their website (www.photoking.com).
Do you have Bridge’s colour management disabled? Might explain why its colours are off for you.
I get the yellow cast too – it’s a constant struggle with skin tones. I have tried DPP but any more satisfying results. I think what I really need to do is calibrate ACR to my 2 cameras and then use a grey card.
mike, i have the colour management enabled in bridge. the previews are generated by ACR because they don’t appear if i remove the ACR version to an older on which doesn’t support my camera.
athena, the main problem i have is the inability to get my RAW images to look like the jpegs that come out of my camera. DPP does a better job of matching them while giving me higher quality starting images. someone else suggested capture one to me. i’ve not used it before but will look into it. :)