But it’s not how most photo editing applications, certainly not those that process RAW files behave. Even Canon’s DPP software, which appears to work as you describe, is not doing quite what you think it is doing.
I realise you describe yourself as a ‘power user’, I’d describe myself that way too, but it took me a while to adjust from creating, editing and saving, Word and Excel type files to processing RAW files from my camera, so please allow me to spell things out in detail.
To illustrate what I mean, here’s a screen shot of a Canon RAW file (a .CR3 file from my Canon 90D) that I’ve opened in Canon’s DPP4 and to which I’ve made some ridiculous edits:
If I click on the ‘save’ button above the image I get a typical Windows save dialog, but look if you closely at how that dialog is titled, you’ll see it says ‘Convert and save’ and the only file types you can choose from are JPEG or TIFF:
In other words, DDP is processing the RAW data as defined by the edits and writing that converted data in a non-RAW format. In photo editing terms that convert and save is ‘destructive’, it bakes your edits into the JPEG / TIFF and so even if you reopen the JPEG / TIFF you cannot undo the edits and reprocess the RAW data in a different manner.
Having ‘converted and saved’ I’m done so I want to quit DPP, so I click File | Exit. At which point DDP throws up another dialog about saving changes:
Note this time there’s no choice about where or in what format the file will be saved. DPP is going to update the RAW file that was edited.
At this point most people here who have never used Canon’s DPP software are probably feeling faint at the idea that original RAW data is going to be lost, because the edits are going to get baked into the RAW file and thus they’d not be able to reprocess the image in a different style at some point in the future.
Don’t panic! Yes, the edits are written to the original RAW file but they are stored within the RAW file in a manner that only the DPP software can see. You can reopen the file in DPP, decide your first edit was rubbish and reprocess it differently, i.e. this save was non-destructive, phew!
The non-destructive nature of the save that Canon’s DPP applies to a Canon RAW file is also evident when you reopen a RAW file saved by DPP in a different photo editor. Other editors don’t understand the extra info that DPP has written to the file so they just ignore it. Here’s what the RAW file + crazy edits I made in DPP look like if I reopen it in Photolab:
NB the washed out colours are because the forum can only handle images in sRGB colour space but I work in a wide gamut colour space, on my monitor (and when I print) the colours in this sunset are vivid oranges and reds.
Are you still with me? I hope so…
In order to apply what you’ve learnt from working with DPP to Photolab you’ll need to learn some new terminology.
- The equivalent of DPP’s ‘save and convert’ dialog is the ‘export’ feature.
- There is no direct equivalent of DPP’s prompt to save when you exit Photolab. This is because whenever you make an edit in Photolal a description of that edit is automatically written to the PL database and (providing you have ticked the option in Edit | Preferences | General tab | Correction Settings heading, and you should) to a .dop file.
- The lack of no prompt to save on exit is not a problem because, even though the edits that were autosaved during your previous editing session are automatically reapplied, you can either pick up and continue from those edits or you can revert to a clean slate by reapplying your default starting preset.
I hope the above helps.
