Canon EOS mag

Technique Digital Photo Professional

Select and sort Digital Photo Professional is not just a raw converter. You can also use it to view, organise and select photos. Andrew Gibson explores the cataloguing features of this software that is supplied on a CD with every EOS camera.

Finding your photos in DPP One of the first things you will want to do when you open DPP is find your photos and look at them. If you predominantly use the raw format, this is a convenient way to look at, organise and select your favourite images before going on to convert and edit them in DPP. If you predominantly shoot JPEG files, you can use DPP to view and organise your files, but

you will find the image editing side limited. You can also view any TIFF files that you have on your computer, although again, image editing capability is limited. The Main Window When you open DPP you will see something like the layout illustrated top right (depending on how your preferences are set up – more on those in a moment). You are in the Main Window. On the left, click on the Folder tab (circled) to see the contents of your computer’s hard drive plus any connected external drives. Viewing photos To view photos, click on one of the folders displayed under the Folder tab. If there is a grey arrow located next to the folder name, that indicates there are more folders inside. Click on the arrow to reveal the internal folders. When you reach a folder containing images, DPP displays thumbnails of the photos on the right hand side of the Main window. Thumbnail size You can change the size of the thumbnails displayed on the screen by going to the View menu (above right) and selecting the Large thumbnail (above far right) Medium thumbnail (right) or Small thumbnail (far right) options. A useful alternative is the Thumbnail with information option. It displays a large thumbnail along with a luminance histogram and the main camera settings used to take the photo (above top). This is handy when you want to evaluate exposure or verify the settings used when you shot the images.

Thumbnail with information

Above The thumbnail view is selected in the View menu.

42 Reproduced from EOS magazine January-March 2013 management tool. It is not as sophisticated as specialist programs such as Apple Aperture, Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Bridge. But since it comes free with your camera (updates are also free) it is a good place to begin if you are also just getting started with an EOS camera. You can always upgrade in the future if you outgrow DPP’s capabilities. You might be accustomed to thinking of Digital Photo Professional (DPP) as a raw file editing program and not much more. But look a little closer and you will find that it can also help you to organise and sort your photos. Organising photos has always been a bit of a problem for photographers, especially if your output tends to be on the prolific side. Whereas once this often meant finding a way of organising shoeboxes (or filing cabinets) full of negatives and slides, for most photographers it now means keeping track of digital files. In the days of film, shooting a couple of cassettes (72 exposures) at an event was considered extravagant. Today, with shooting costs measured in pence rather than pounds, it’s not unusual to come home with hundreds of images from a day out. A little effort now will help you keep track of your photos as your collection grows. DPP can help you do this. Don’t get me wrong – the software is not designed to be a fully-fledged image Above DPP lets you select and sort images into a ‘Collection’ (see opposite page). This is just one of many features which are not obvious when you first open DPP, but which make the program more than just a raw file converter.

Organising folders and files

Large thumbnails

The key to organising your photos starts with the way you store them. My system is very simple, and I share it here so you can use it or adapt it to your needs. I shoot exclusively with the raw format and store my files on an external hard drive. This means they don’t use valuable space on my computer’s internal drive. It also makes it easy for me to back them up. All I have to do is copy the folder containing my raw files (the ‘Images’ folder below) to another hard drive. My files are organised by year, month and day. Within each day folder every shoot is individually labelled. I can find any photo I need right away, just by navigating through the chronological chain. A benefit of this system is that it is easy to extend. As each year passes I just add more folders. Earlier folders remain untouched. Backup is easy. I only need to copy over new folders to my backup drive – earlier folders remain unchanged. This system does not provide the keyword and tag options of more sophisticated programs, but it works for me.

Medium thumbnail

Small thumbnails

Above One of the attractions of DPP is its range of view options. You can use the medium or small thumbnails to home in on the image you want, and then switch to a large view to rate and check mark the image (see next page). It is a simple system, but has some powerful features.

Creating a collection The Folder view system works well, especially if your image folders are well organised. However, there are times when you may wish to group images together that are stored across two or more folders. The Collection is an easy way to do so. To add an image to the Collection, select the thumbnail in the Main window, then go to the File menu and select the ‘Add to collection’ option. Do the same with other images from any folder. When you are ready, click on the Collection tab to view the images. From here you can use the Quick check window to look at them full size or go to the Edit image window to process raw files.

Right Images are stored in nested folders by year, month and date. As long as you know when you shot the images, you can find them. Unlike some specialist image management programs, DPP does not save images within the application. You simply navigate to a folder on your hard drive (which can be an external drive) containing the image or images you want to view.

Above Create a collection with the ‘Add to collection’ menu item.’Remove from collection’ and ‘Clear collection’ options are also available.

Above It is only possible to have one Collection at a time, but DPP remembers the Collection if you close the program down, then reopen it. Think of the Collection as a ‘lightbox’ for making a shortlist from all your images. You can add and remove images as you increase or narrow down your search.

Reproduced from EOS magazine January-March 2013 43