Canon software

Canon’s DPP editor + setting up new Canon EOS DSLR

As well enabling you to fix problems with a photograph’s colours and tones, you can use Canon’s free DPP 4 software to overcome camera-related problems such as sensor spots. These grey splodges are caused by dust sticking to your Canon’s sensor, and are particularly noticeable in large, light areas, such as patches of clear blue sky.

DPP 4 has a Copy Stamp tool that will remove ugly sensor spots in just a few clicks, by replacing the offending item with pixels sampled from a clear area of the image. But while the Copy Stamp works well, it can take time to repair multiple sensor spots as you need to click on them one by one.

Most Canon DSLRS enable you to capture Dust Delete Data; by shooting a clean white piece of paper you can create a map of any dust stuck to your sensor. This Dust Delete Data reference file is then appended to all the photos you subsequently take. DPP 4 can then read this Dust Delete Data file and automatically repair (or hide) multiple sensor spots in one quick operation.

While creating a Dust Delete Data file is a good idea in theory, if you change lenses on location then you may add new specks of dust to your sensor that will still need to be removed manually with the Copy Stamp tool. You may also want to clean up older files that don’t contain a Dust Delete Data reference file. Check out our annotation and step-by-step guide to see how to hide sensor spots and clone out other distracting elements, such as the reflections in the window of our sample image.