Solution to Canon 7D RAW Conversion Problem in Aperture 2
I recently picked up on a thread on twitter from user @benjjamieson where he was seeing a serious magenta cast applied to his 7D RAW files in Aperture. The same problem was happening in Preview, which definitely pointed to an OS-level problem. The issue has also been discussed at some length in the Apple forums.
I contacted him and asked him to send me a sample file (I don’t have a 7D myself) and he did. I saw the same problem on my system, both in Preview and in Aperture, but not in Photoshop. Fortunately that led me to discover an easy solution.
If you convert the 7D RAW (.CR2) file to a DNG using Adobe’s free DNG Converter, then import the DNG into Aperture, the problem goes away. The files can be batch converted, so it’s only a single additional step.
Until this problem is addressed by Apple, this appears to be a perfectly viable solution.
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Comments
on January 22, 2010 - 4:59am
Hmmm….. but I saw the same problem with the file in Canon’s RAW converter as well.
http://www.johnthawley.com
on January 22, 2010 - 5:07am
I didn’t try Canon’s software… I avoid it like the plague. But it looked fine in Photoshop and looks fine in Aperture once converted to DNG—at least on my system. Give it a try and by all means please report back!
@PhotoJoseph
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on January 22, 2010 - 7:05am
Unfortunately, not really an ‘easy’ solution!
I shoot weddings - low light, outdoor receptions that I need to pull in few hundred images from. Adding the extra step of converting to DNG, then pulling all those into Aperture is going to slow things down significantly, even with the batch conversion.
Seems that calibration done with my Huey was a big contributor - now looking at sorting that out.
Will keep all updated and thanks to Joseph and John for for their advice and suggestions on this one!
on January 22, 2010 - 1:20pm
Ben,
I’d say that the added time to convert to DNG is minimal, it’s a fast conversion. Your Huey isn’t causing the problem; it may be making it more obvious, but that doesn’t mean that it’s contributing.
I don’t know what your workflow is today, but it’s far faster to copy the files of the CF card, then import into Aperture, then it is to import straight from CF (assuming you have more than one card to import). So if you copy the images to a folder, run the batch converter, then import as reference (leaving them DNG’s in their original location), you could end up saving time in the long run!
Worth a try. Set a stopwatch and do some tests, we’d love to see the results here!
-Joseph
@PhotoJoseph
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