Canon DCS 520 RAW conversion

I have an archive of images taken with my old Canon DCS 520 camera. Aperture does not support the RAW format from this camera, yet Adobe Camera RAW 4.1 does.
What is the best way to convert these images so that I can bring them into Aperture an still make adjustments as if they were RAW files. Can they be converted to a DNG file? And if so how?
Any help greatly appreciated.

Sorry, answered my own question. Adobe's DNG converter handled the job perfectly and using the DNG file I can access RAW adjustments of my Canon DCS 520 files in Aperture 2.0.

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Canon Digital Photo Professional (correct):
Aperture RAW processing (very wrong):

>Is MS Picture Viewer a colour managed application? I don't know, but don't think so. Lightroom is however which might be the cause of your problems.
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RAW conversion for Canon 5D Mark II

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Some of the Adobe download links are wrong and take you to an earlier version of Adobe Camera Raw. The latest version is ACR 5.6 which brings support for the newest camera models such as:
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http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/thankyou.jsp?ftpID=4626&fileID=4303
Download the plug-in for Elements 8
Open the zip folder you just downloaded and click Extract Files.
You should see a 64 bit folder and a plug-in file below it. The plug in has a file name: Camera Raw.8bi
Now drag the plug-in file (or copy it) into the File Formats folder in the following location:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop Elements 6.0\Plug-Ins\File Formats. See Gotcha
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Does Adobe offer an app to perform a batch conversion from Canon CR.2 raw files to TIFF files?

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Trevor.Dennis wrote:
Note the option to open the first file and apply settings.
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http://www.loftsoft.co.uk/pictures/KC7U5116%20-%20RAW%201.0.jpg
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I have an A77 and see that DxO RAW conversions look different

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Cheers,
Paul

Hi Hal,
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Paul

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If so, how big of a difference? Would it be better to use Canon RAW converter instead?
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HTH
-Allen

Aperture RAW conversion and noise

I've been using Aperture for many years and have recently learned something useful about how to tweak the RAW conversion settings. Until recently I just left them at the default settings for my camera, a Panasonic GH2.
Anyhow I've not been entirely happy with shadow noise (otherwise I reckon it's a great camera). Many web sites say that a degree of shadow noise is normal for this camera, so I didn't figure mine was any different. I tried a variety of noise reduction approaches but none really made a worthwhile improvement.
Until a few days ago when I tried tweaking the 'Raw Fine Tuning' settings - and I found a way to make things *much* better.
Please note that the following comments may only be relevant to Panasonic RAW files, and maybe only for the GH2. I don't know if they apply to other cameras (though I think they may.
It turns out that for the GH2, the default 'Raw Fine Tuning' setting includes 'Sharpening' of 0.78 and 'Edges' of 0.79. This is fairly aggressive sharpening, but I didn't really realise what it was doing to noise until I discovered that was significantly increasing shadow noise -even at base ISO!
If I set these both the sharpening sliders in the Raw Fine Tuning section to '0', the 'grain' in the shadows is much smoother - a massive improvement.
But, of course, the image is a bit less 'sharp'. Well, this isn't much of a problem with 16+ megapixel cameras. Unless you are making huge enlargements from originals, and really look closely at the finest details at 100%, it makes very little difference if you give up this 'sharpness'. But the reduction in noise is actually very obvious indeed. It's much better!
Most of the sharpness I need on these less noisy images can easily be added by including the 'Edge Sharpen' adjustment, either at the defailt settings, or marginally toned down a bit. I'm currently using Intensity 0.7, Edges 0.3 and Falloff 0.4. This leaves most smooth areas untouched, so the 'noise' or 'grain' in smooth areas is as it comes from the sensor. By toggling the Edge Sharpen on and off, I can easily confirm no change in 100% or 200% loupe views.
That level of edge sharpening is a bit subtle, but actually achieves most of what I got from the Raw Fine Tuning sharpening sliders. It will be applied only to in-focus contrasty things like eyelashes or hairs or other defined edges, and very nicely.
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Some related web pages:
http://www.jonroemer.com/blog/2011/01/aperture-3-too-sharp-tweak-the-default/
http://www.twin-pixels.com/raw-processors-review-aperture-bibble-capture-one-dxo -lightroom/
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Nice observations, Chris. I think the RAW Fine Tuning is often overlooked, even though it's a vital first step in RAW processing, and really the whole point of shooting RAW in the first place. Too much boost yields horrible skin tones in my experience. I have a default of .50 Boost and Hue Boost, Sharpening and Edges at .25, Moire .50, Radius 12.0 and Denoise .25. I've found these are "mid range" settings for the Canon 5Dii, and first make small adjustments to the Fine Tuning brick before moving on to exposure adjustments.

RAW conversion bug with Noise Reduction

Hello,
I have found a serious bug in the RAW conversion when noise reduction is applied. When converting from two types of Canon RAW files (a CRW from a Powershot G6 and a CR2 from a 20d) I found that if you apply Noise Reduction to a RAW file on very low settings (the default setting in the NR function will produce this reliably) single-pixel lines appear at regular intervals throughout the image. Here is an example:
You can see several lines in this image:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/140/3821480263171e76604b.jpg
A 100% detail of which is here:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/179/382148021af6586d27eo.jpg
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-Steve G

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In manual it said that if you have noisy video and want to lower the size then you can use this filter. It also blur the video a bit. But I suspect it is more than blur as I try gaussian blur in time line and the result is not as good. You can see the result as well. There is the tab between source and target and you can compare the result by togling between source and target tab.
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Poor raw conversion from Fujifilm X100 .raf format in Lightroom 3 and 4

I'm seeing very poor results when doing raw conversion from Fujifilm X100 .raf format. Who can I contact about this? Is there anything I can do?
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And for more detail:
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(Lightroom 4.2, Camera Raw 7.2 on LEFT --- Fujifilm X100 in-camera jpg on RIGHT)

The blue light is so intense that it is, or almost is, saturating the sensor.
The camera’s built-in raw conversion handles this by shifting the color to cyan—clipping the blue and allowing the green to contribute more. I doubt there was cyan lighting in the scene, only blue.
Adobe does not shift the hue, but this makes the blue seem over saturated. Adobe’s conversion may be more colorimetrically correct, but less pleasing in this case of intense lighting that the sensor cannot accurately record.
It is a difference in camera profile used between the camera and Adobe. Since Adobe does not supply camera-match profiles for much more than Nikon and Canon cameras, you’re not going to be able to fix things other than managing the over-saturation using HSL or WB or other things like lower-vibrance, higher saturation.
You could try making your own camera profile using an X-Rite Color-Checker Passport or the color-checker and the Adobe DNG Profile Editor:
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OS X 10.4.6 - RAW Conversion

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Cheers,
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Yes, William is correct. 10.4.6 delivers support for
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which you may have spent a great deal of time
adjusting, stay just as you adjusted them until you
explicitly choose to migrate them up to the newer RAW
decode (this can be done in a batch process on select
images or whole projects).
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Raw conversion color differences

Yes, I know that Adobe had to guess at how raw files are encoded (I shoot Nikon)a and that perfect color conversion should not be expected but...
I started with Capture NX2 and while I loved the quality of pictures I could get from it, it was very slow and cumbersome, and publishing photos was not possible.
I switched to LR3 and found the photo management (publishing, collections, etc) to be marvelous (maybe other products have it as well, but I found my happy place. However, I noticed that even with a calibrated monitor the colors were not right. Below are two pictures labeled cnx2 and LR3. The CNX2 version was processed to include "bluing" the sky. Not much else was done. The LR3 version (done as a training aid until this was found) is unprocessed except for an X-rite color checker profile applied (more on this later). Notice how the CNX2 red has turned pink or magenta in the LR3 version. To try and fix the pink, I bought an X-Rite color checker and installed their plugin for creating profiles. Made no significant difference. This is really bothering me. Sure with some skills I haven't yet acquired I may be able to target the red and fix it, but to do it correctly I'd need to know what It's supposed to look like, and I had hoped to no longer require the use of CNX2 so that wouldn't be the case. I'm considering going back to CNX2 for raw conversions and maybe capture sharpening (I'm more comfortable with CNX2 capture sharpening numbers than I am with LR3).
CNX2
LR3/ACR 6.x
Thoughts? Suggestions?

function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}
Jeff Schewe wrote:
Really, people tend to give Nikon and Canon far too much credit...in fact, they just barely got this stuff to work. I will say the cameras and sensors are pretty darn impressive...their image processing knowledge, not so much.
Canon does seem to know how to make pleasing images and get the most out of their data.
Some examples: Canon does a better job, in some ways, at rescuing partial overexposure (compare sunset images). And they know how to put a raw converter in a piece of silicon that runs in a tiny fraction of a second.
But these things aren't really important... The real issue is even simpler:
If all you did was make the default profile for each camera produce the same colors the cameras themselves produce, while still providing all the same configurability and features, you'd cease to get complaints about colors being "off".
Whether you think the cameras produce "good" color or the camera company engineers know anything about color is irrelevant.
No one would be harmed by this, but you'd stop confusing customers who expect one thing and see another.
-Noel

Canon DCS 520 RAW conversion

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