CANON DPP 4
The Canon Magazine 81
VIDEO ALSO ONLINE MONO CONVERSIONS
http://bit.ly/pp_156_8(^01)
BASIC PALETTE
The Basic image editing panel
provides a range of tools to help you
make a striking high-contrast mono
conversion of your colour Raw file.
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HELPFUL HISTOGRAM
This tool is particularly useful for
ensuring a black-and-white image
has a healthy spread of tones, with
shadows represented at the left
and the highlights at the right.
Our start image is underexposed,
so the graph will be clumped more
towards the shadows and midtones
at the left of the histogram when you
first open it. The edited image’s
histogram should look more like this,
with a wider spread of tones.
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PICTURE STYLE
Click this dropdown menu to access
the Monochrome Picture Style. This
removes all colour information so
that only the greyscale tones remain.
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CLIPPING WARNING
Click this icon to reveal clipped pixels.
Underexposed shadows will appear
as patches of blue. These areas will
print out as pure black and be free of
detail. Overexposed highlights will
appear as patches of red. These
areas will appear as pure white.
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DISPLAY SETTINGS
Click this triangle to fine-tune the
threshold of the clipping warning’s
settings. By default the threshold is
wide, but we only want to be warned
about the very darkest shadows and
the brightest highlights. Set the
Shadow Warning threshold to 5. Set
the Highlight Warning threshold to
- Now only shadows with a level
between 0-5 will appear in patches of
blue. Highlights with levels between
250-255 will appear as patches of
red. This helps you discover the
darkest and lightest pixels so you can
restore detail where needed while
ensuring a strong contrast.
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CONTRAST
An effective mono conversion should
have some black shadows and white
highlights (or you’ll end up with a
drab wash of greyscale tones). Drag
this slider right to create darker
shadows and whiter highlights.
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SHADOW & HIGHLIGHT
The Shadow slider enables you to
selectively lighten the shadows and
midtones in your monochrome
conversions to reveal missing tonal
details. The Highlight slider helps to
claw back missing highlight detail.
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FILTER EFFECT
By experimenting with various filter
effects you can make specific objects
stand out in the black-and-white
version of the scene, based on the
their original colours. For example,
the Red filter darkens the blue sky,
which helps reveal more subtle
contrasting cloud detail.
JARGON BUSTER
HOW IT WORKS HIGH-CONTRAST MONO
Ensure the presence of black shadows and white highlights with help from clipping warnings
Can I use DPP 4?
Download the latest version of DPP
from http://bit.ly/get_dpp. Check
the website to see if your DSLR is
compatible with DPP 4 – you’ll need
your serial number to update. DPP 4
works with most recent Canon EOS
DSLRs, but for older cameras you
may have to use a previous version.
PICTURE STYLES
These in-camera presets change
the way an image is processed to
adjust its colours and tones. You
can also alter a Raw file’s Picture
Style in DPP 4.
THRESHOLD
This term refers to the precise
range of shadows (or highlights)
that the blue (or red) clipping
warning patches will appear in;
reduce the threshold to show only
the darkest or brightest areas.
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