Is lightroom better for RAW colour correction than DPP

mark1616

mark1616

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Mark
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Hi everyone, I'm a Canon DPP user when it comes to RAW conversion but find that getting the white balance sometimes is not easy so I was hoping to find a comparison, or even just an idea of how easy it is to do in Lightroom.

My current method is grey card where possible, however in a church with variable lighting or at a reception with a mix of flash and ambient then that's pretty impossible so usually try to pick up white from a shirt etc. The results are never as good as I would hope for, is it my methodology or is it the software?

How do you go about getting a good WB for your shots?
 
i saw that you've had no response here Mark, so hopefully this will bump it to people's attention. I don't use lightroom so i can't advise - but i have gradually stopped using DPP and use Adobe Camera Raw now as it takes me straight from editing the raw into my elements 9 software. But, like you, i just try to use something white from the image as my starting point and tweak from there. Having said that, most of my stuff is landscapes or home interiors where i have a bit more time when shooting to sort the WB out first.
 
I would say that Lightroom is a better RAW processor than DPP.

White balance I have never found to be satisfactory using any reference points and eye dropper tools. They tend to come out too cold. I suspect it may be that my monitor is set to 6500K not 5000K. ( The exception is the Colour Passport that has different balances for white point ).

With mixed light I prefer to use my own eye and determine what looks acceptable. With Lightroom you can generate a reference image and hold that on the screen to compare other images to. This facility is designed to go on a second screen, but I have a 27" iMac and the second window sits nicely on the same screen, no problem. I also drop back into library mode which displays all the images as a contact sheet. You can then compare all the images and make sure they are consistent .

Download a trial version of Lightroom and see what you think. Id opt to get some videos first so you can make the most of the 30 day trial
 
Now I haven't used DPP for many years but lightroom does a fair job of WB, that said with mixed lighting it can be trickier to get a "correct" white balance, in cases like this it sometimes helps to be able to ajust the shadows and midtones colours individually, something neither LR or dpp can do as far as I remember.
 
Personally I find Lightroom works much better from a workflow perspective, haven't had any issues with WB really and being able to do most things within it is a great time saver!
 
I've started setting a manual colour temp of 4600K in camera and this is giving me an even start point for colour balance in Lightroom. I've only tried it on one wedding so far but it was a lot easier.
 
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