Here’s some good news for Canon photographers (no, it’s not the confirmation of the much rumoured, near fabled EOS 7D2 DSLR, at least, not yet), but rather the announcement of Digital Photo Professional (DPP) 4.0. This marks the first sweeping overhaul of Canon’s RAW processing (and general processing) software, in a very long time.

Canon elaborated that it has made the all-new Digital Photo Professional 4.0 a much faster, more dynamic, linear and feature-packed image editing software solution, thanks to the ability to fully utilise 64-bit architecture. Furthermore, the company elaborated that the latest version of DPP has been designed and developed from the ground up, tailored to the workflows of professional and high-end amateurs alike.

Feature flurry

More particularly, users can look forward to improved speed in displaying RAW images and real-time image adjustment. Additionally, other features of the software include a more user friendly interface; colour adjustments for specific colour gamuts; improved highlight and shadow recovery; support for movie playback; better integration with the EOS Utility (also updated); and support for 64-bit environments. In fact, with regards to the last one, DPP 4.0 will be compatible only with 64-bit operating systems, such as Windows 7, 8 and 8.1, plus Mac OS X 10.8 and 10.9.

The update will also bring a new colour adjustment palette that allows hue, saturation and luminance adjustment for eight individual colour gamuts, enabling the user to adjust one specific colour in isolation without affecting the image as a whole. This, explained Canon, is particularly useful when adjusting background tones in portraits, where there might previously have been a risk of giving a colour cast to skin tones, for example.

Equally as nifty is a secondary image window, which can be used as a magnifier for detailed inspection of chosen areas of an image.

The good, the bad and the patient

The good news is that DPP 4.0 will apparently be available to download from the end of this month. The bad news is that at its launch, it is as yet only compatible with Canon’s current range of full-frame DSLRs, including the EOS-1D X, EOS-1D C, EOS 5D Mark III  and EOS 6D.

For other models, an update of DPP 3.14 will be released. If you aren’t fortunate enough to own one of those cameras as yet, don’t despair, we suspect its reach will be expanded in the near future, especially when the long-awaited (and much wished for) EOS 7D II finally makes its debut.