RAW Pictures in DPP Program Look Dull

jlm86

Most of my pictures I take in RAW and when I look at in Canon DPP program they always needs lots of touch up and saturation help.

Is this the camera, format, or something else?

Also, I printed out some directly from DPP and they look dull.

jlm86

You got me! No I did not read the manual, sorry. It was looking like my Sony TX models had better pictures.

Great site @Moose. I love the aesthetics of the webpage and navigation.

PBked

Hi @jlm86, I agree to some extent with @liontamer about using RAW. Elsewhere on this forum I have advocated the use of JPG for the majority of your shots.

The reason your RAW pictures look dull is because the camera has captured every bit of data in the scene. In other words, raw data applies no post processing to the picture. This is why Canon supplies DPP, although as liontamer says, it is not brilliant.

However, when you take a picture in JPG the camera does add some post processing which is why your pictures will look more vibrant in JPG.

The downside to JPG is that it is called a 'lossy' format because it discards some data in the post processing stage in order to keep the file size down.

Your camera has 18 megapixels, so the loss of data does not make much impression on the picture unless you do a lot of processing in a picture editor.

This is a simple explanation, but it helps to have some idea of what is going on.

Regards, PBked

Moose

Howdy @jlm86 - My friend @PBked gave a wonderful answer.

I'm a big supporter of RAW format, especially when there is high dynamic range in the shot...like a bright sky and a dark foreground. Using programs like Lightroom, you can recover and extract an amazing amount of light for overexposed and underexposed areas.

If you don't have the time or the desire to have that kind of control over your images, then shoot JPG and let your camera process the photos for you. All the best! :)