Helicon Soft Forum

Hello! I have been working with .CR3 raw files with my new mirrorless camera, and I've observed something interesting happening that I can't seem to correct.

When rendering a stack, Adobe DNG Converter will open in the dock to "process" each photo, and then the stack will advance processing. I have not observed this behavior with .CR2 files - with those, after I click Render, the stack just starts processing immediately.

I've made sure to download/install the latest versions of Camera RAW and DNG Converter, and have my settings in Helicon Focus set to RAW-in-DNG-out.

I've attached a couple of videos showing what is happening when I Render a .CR3 stack vs. a .CR2 stack.

Any insight into why this is happening, and to potentially get the files to behave like the .CR2 ones and just start rendering immediately, would be greatly appreciated!
.CR3 video: https://i.imgur.com/n9IPeqD.mp4
.CR2 video: https://i.imgur.com/EYkKDln.mp4

As long as "RAW-in-DNG-out" raw decoder is selected for CR2 as well, there is absolutely no difference in how they are treated. The only possible difference is that CR2 may be faster to decode so the button doesn't have enough time to show up in the task bar.

Also, make sure to compare the first render after loading the images into Helicon Focus. The second and subsequent renders will not invoke the DNG converter thanks to caching. Again, regardless of the specific raw format.

Catherine wrote: 29.01.2023 02:01 As long as "RAW-in-DNG-out" raw decoder is selected for CR2 as well, there is absolutely no difference in how they are treated. The only possible difference is that CR2 may be faster to decode so the button doesn't have enough time to show up in the task bar.

Also, make sure to compare the first render after loading the images into Helicon Focus. The second and subsequent renders will not invoke the DNG converter thanks to caching. Again, regardless of the specific raw format.

That is a possibility for sure. If it is true, it is quite astonishing how much faster CR2 decodes compared to CR3. The caching feature is great, as the converter doesn't need to run as you stated. Interestingly enough, if I open DNG Converter and convert the files to .DNG first, the performance is identical to CR2 files. In the end, the output file is saved as a .DNG, so I guess it really doesn't matter in the end since I do my editing post-stack.

However, I do wonder if anyone else here that is using CR3 files is experiencing what I am?