Camera or DPP for lens correction?

[John Liddle]

Greetings one and all,

as a new D5 Mk III owner, I see that the camera can correct chromatic aberration and peripheral illumination internally.

Are these corrections applied to the original RAW file and therefore irreversible?

I also note that DPP additionally corrects lens distortion - so is it better (although perhaps less convenient) to perform all these corrections in DPP (where they can either be reversed, or the original left unadulterated)?

All and any advice welcome.

[Cyberman]

Re: Camera or DPP for lens correction?

I shoot in RAW and do all my lens corrections in Lightroom.

[Stan]

Re: Camera or DPP for lens correction?

I think you will find that any corrections you apply in camera will only affect the jpeg and not the RAW file. I never enable any of these options and shoot RAW and any corrections that are necessary I either make in ACR or Photoshop

Stan

[Tigger]

Re: Camera or DPP for lens correction?

I shoot in RAW and do all my lens corrections in Lightroom.

same here - when I'm out I just want to shoot, all the correction work gets done in comfort at home

I think you will find that any corrections you apply in camera will only affect the jpeg and not the RAW file. I never enable any of these options and shoot RAW and any corrections that are necessary I either make in ACR or Photoshop

Stan

that was my understanding as well Stan - Raw is Raw you need to process it

[John Liddle]

Re: Camera or DPP for lens correction?

Thank you Andy, Stan & Ian,

I appreciate your helpful observations.

From what I can gather from other fora, the in-camera corrections are stored as "bolt-on" flags to the actual RAW data. DPP picks up these flags and makes use of them when you process the file. Other RAW processing programs ignore them and you have to make use of those programs' internal correction profiles.

In the case of .jpg files, it seems the corrections are applied to the file and baked in permanently.

Thanks again for helping to clear some of the fog of new feature information I find myself in.

[Tigger]

Re: Camera or DPP for lens correction?

From what I can gather from other fora, the in-camera corrections are stored as "bolt-on" flags to the actual RAW data. DPP picks up these flags and makes use of them when you process the file. Other RAW processing programs ignore them and you have to make use of those programs' internal correction profiles.

didn;t know that, cheers - although I still prefer to process afterwards

[Cyberman]

Re: Camera or DPP for lens correction?

From what I can gather from other fora, the in-camera corrections are stored as "bolt-on" flags to the actual RAW data. DPP picks up these flags and makes use of them when you process the file. Other RAW processing programs ignore them and you have to make use of those programs' internal correction profiles.

In the case of .jpg files, it seems the corrections are applied to the file and baked in permanently.

That's interesting info, I'd sill be dubious as the JPG conversion sometimes leaves a little too be defined as far as I'm concerned.
Like Ian I'll stick to processing the RAW file myself. By processing myself I can get my own image style.

[John Liddle]

Re: Camera or DPP for lens correction?

I thought I would consult the oracle, so I sent a support query to Canon....

"If in-camera peripheral correction and/or chromatic aberration correction are enabled, is the RAW file changed permanently by these processes, or are the changes indicated by some additional information stored alongside the RAW data? If stored as additional data, can RAW processing programs other than DPP make use of them?"

The response from Canon was....

"The information is stored on the RAW file itself, but not applied on the camera just yet. With Digital Photo Professional the information can be added. The standard setting for both options are enabled."

So this seems to back up what I had gleaned from other sources.

I also asked....

"If saving the image in .jpg format, are these corrections permanently applied to the .jpg version of the image?"

The response to this was....

"No, keep in mind however if the options were not enabled, this cannot be added later on with the JPEG images within Digital Photo Professional."

I am slightly puzzled by this, since if the corrections are not permanently applied, are they also stored in the .jpg file as additional information? The corrections certainly cannot be applied in DPP, since when editing a .jpg image, the lens correction options seem to be greyed out (even if the corrections were enabled when taking the shot).

So I might send a supplementary query and see if I can tease out a better explanation regarding .jpg images.

[El Sid]

Re: Camera or DPP for lens correction?

I also asked....

"If saving the image in .jpg format, are these corrections permanently applied to the .jpg version of the image?"

The response to this was....

"No, keep in mind however if the options were not enabled, this cannot be added later on with the JPEG images within Digital Photo Professional."

I am slightly puzzled by this, since if the corrections are not permanently applied, are they also stored in the .jpg file as additional information? The corrections certainly cannot be applied in DPP, since when editing a .jpg image, the lens correction options seem to be greyed out (even if the corrections were enabled when taking the shot).

So I might send a supplementary query and see if I can tease out a better explanation regarding .jpg images.

I'm puzzled too... With RAW files any parameters you apply such as various picture styles, sharpness settings etc. are applied by DPP on opening the files but can sunsequently be adjusted as desired and any in-camera lens corrections are likely to be applied the same way. I f you use DPP regualrly I imagine that applying lens correction in-camera to raw files is likely to save a fair bit of time in PP - as far as I understand it the correction data in the camera should be the same as those in DPP...

With the JPG files I would expect any lens corrections in camera to be applied to the JPG and fixed permanently otherwise whats the point. As you note you can't apply these, or other purely raw file, corrections to the JPG in DPP. I suspect that they mean if you didn't have the correction option enabled at the taking stage when using JPGs there's no way of adding them after - which we know anywway. I suspect that whoever replied has either misread your query or garbled their response...

If in doubt take a few test shots in RAW and JPG with and without correction enabled and see what happens - it'll cost you nowt but a bit of time...