Your EOS camera will automatically correct for common lens aberrations if you use Canon lenses. These corrections are applied automatically to JPEG images but they will only be used on RAW files by Canon’s DPP software. In third party software, they are discarded.
The example shown above is Peripheral illumination correction, but on the latest models there are additional corrections applied automatically – Chromatic aberration correction and Diffusion correction. A further setting – Distortion correction – can also be turned on within the camera.
Can't I do all this in other software?
Now of course, all these settings and their effect on the image can be replicated in other RAW converter software, but you have to make the corrections manually. And that takes time, regardless of how proficient you may be.
Ask yourself, could that time be better spent elsewhere?
Open the images in DPP and those corrections are done for you. And, just as usefully, those settings can be undone, or altered as needed. Did you have the wrong white balance set when shooting? No problem – just change the white balance setting in DPP and it's instantly put right.
So why use DPP 4? Well the images speak for themselves, and out of preference here at EOS magazine we would rather have the camera and computer doing all the work rather than spending hours correcting substitute settings added by non-Canon RAW converters.
Of course, the ultimate aim is to get the image right in-camera. That way, we can spend more time out with our Canon EOS camera!