Canon EOS 1D Mark II SLR Review

Included with the Mark II is Canon's Digital Photo Professional (DPP) program that offers users high-speed processing of RAW images. Rivaling and even surpassing features of expensive, stand-alone and plug-in RAW image processing programs, DPP streamlines professional photographers' workflow, providing time and labor saving options such as instantaneous RAW image adjustment display and support for .CR2 and RAW .TIF as well as Exif TIFF and JPEG formats.

DPP is compatible with multiple color space settings including sRGB, Adobe RGB and Wide Gamut RGB as well as Color Management Settings using ICC profiles.

Among the array of processing options provided by DPP are color channels, tone curves, exposure compensation, white balance, dynamic range, brightness, contrast, color saturation, ICC Profile embedding and assignment of monitor profiles. Another new feature sure to be embraced by DPP users is the program's ability to allow continuous editing while batches of previously adjusted RAW files are rendered and saved in the background.

Among the numerous features DPP provides is the capability to save multiple adjustments to an image as a "recipe" that can be reloaded and used again or applied to other images. In comparison mode, original and edited images can be compared side by side or within a single split image.

File save options are: Exif-TIFF 8bit, TIFF 16bit or Exif-JPEG with selectable image quality (scale of 1 to 10) and sharpness.

The upgraded EOS Viewer Utility/EOS Capture programs permit downloading of images directly from the camera's CF or SD cards to the computer (utilizing the supplied IEEE 1394 cable or a peripheral card reader) for use by DPP or other programs, and the EOS Capture program in particular works together with DPP to support tethered shooting with a full range of image adjustments in studio environments.

Once images have been adjusted in DPP, a transfer function allows immediate editing in Photoshop or any other imaging program. The Mark II camera's software bundle also includes a TWAIN Driver (for Windows only) and a WIA Driver (for Windows XP only) as well the PhotoStitch program that automatically composites multiple images into a single image.

Note: The latest Camera Raw 2.2 update for Photoshop CS now fully supports the EOS-1D Mark II's new .CR2 raw files.