HOW It WORKS APPLYING PICTURE styles

Use Digital Photo Professional 4’s Picture style menu to quickly adjust tones, colours and sharpness

01 BASIC PANEL

Click on the Basic panel icon to access the Picture Style menu. This dropdown menu will only be available when you’re working with a Raw format file that’s compatible with Digital Photo Professional 4 (see our ‘Can I Use DPP 4’ boxout, right).

02 COMPARE

When experimenting with Picture Styles it’s important to compare the edited version with the original Raw file. Click on this icon to see a before and after image at the same time. You can toggle between different layouts and even split the shot down the middle. Here we’ve chosen the Arrange Vertically option, to see versions side by side.

03 CONTRASTING LIGHTING

Our partially sunlit subject was a challenge to shoot. If we exposed to capture detail in the shadows then we risked blowing out colour and detail in the brighter sky’s highlights. To help us capture detail in the entire tonal range we set the in-camera Picture Style to Neutral. This creates flat contrast and drab colours which we can process to reveal more colour and tonal detail.

04 PICTURE STYLE MENU

The Picture Style drop-down menu gives you access to a range of looks you can apply in a click. The little camera icon indicates the in-camera Picture Style used to capture the selected Raw photo. By selecting the Landscape picture style we’ve boosted the blues and greens to create a more vibrant image. We’ve also lightened up the shadows to reveal more architectural detail.

05 BROWSE

By clicking this button you can load in other Picture Style presets, some of which can alter the look of your shots in more creative ways.

06 SHARPNESS

Our photo’s in-camera Neutral Picture Style setting dials the sharpness of the shot down to 0. When changing to the Landscape Picture Style in DPP 4 the Unsharp Mask’s Strength, Fineness and Threshold sliders automatically increase to give the print more punch. Sharpening can add unwanted artefacts to images, so it makes sense to keep in-camera sharpening to a minimum and then apply sharpening as needed in the post-production stage.

07 UNDO

Feel free to experiment with different looks. Picture styles are applied in a non-destructive way, so you can restore the shot to its original look by clicking here (or selecting its original picture stye preset).