What use is Digital Photo Professional?

Digital Photo Professional (DPP) is Canon's RAW conversion tool. It comes for free with Canon cameras that produce RAW pictures, and once you have it, all updates are free. However, you cannot download it for free without an original copy to update. DPP opens CR2, TIFF, CRW and JPEG files.

When it comes to high end RAW converters, like DPP, Adobe Camera RAW, Adobe Lightroom and Apple's Aperture, they all have their strengths. It is very difficult to tell which one is "best". Someone who masters any one of them, can usually do what s/he needs to do with that program. Anyone who does not fully master any one of them will probably not achieve the best possible result.

Comparing DPP with Nikon's RAW conversion programs is not easy either. DPP can do more with CR2 files than View NX can do with NEF files. Capture NX has more functions for NEF than DPP has for CR2, but what you find in DPP may be more than enough.

If you want a full blown image editing program, neither DPP nor Capture NX cuts it. You cannot use them to paste a face from one person onto another. Neither can you render patterns or add text strings to a picture. For such tasks, you need to use a tool like Adobe Photoshop or the gimp.

DPP can perform batch jobs on several pictures at once. However, it is not scriptable with any internal macros or AppleScript.