Mac Pro and Canon Digital Photo Professional

How much faster is DPP (Digital Photo Professional) on a 3GHz Mac Pro than on a 2.5 GHz PowerMac G5 Quad? Quite a bit faster—I converted 100 Canon EOS 5D “CR2” files on both machines to 16-bit TIF files. Here are the results:

G5 Quad: 16:47 = 10.1 seconds per file
Mac Pro:   10:32 = 6.3 seconds per file

The G5 Quad had 8X1GB ECC memory, and the Mac Pro had 4X512MB ECC memory. I’m expecting more memory soon, and will recheck the Mac Pro figures after installation.

Unfortunately, DPP cannot be commended for efficient usage of the four CPU cores. It averages somewhere around 130% CPU usage, out of a maximum of 400%. Pretty poor implementation, and sadly it’s not alone in it’s wasteful approach. There is a manual workaround, see Digital Photo Professional Batch Processing Tip.