Canon digital SLR cameras awe shipped with a CD full of free tools, like EOS Utility, Digital Photo Professional, Picture Style Editor, and Zoombrowser EX. You can complete all types of things with these programs - transfer photos onto your machine, file your pictures, edit your images. If you can't find your disc, you can download and install the software using this article. It isn't quite as good as having the complete set of Adobe's image manipulation and cataloging software, but it also isn't above a thousand dollars. Free is the best.
EOS Capture Utility. You can link your camera to your machine and control it remotely using the EOS Utility. You can have a live preview of what the SLR sees on your computer. You can modify all of the camera settings via your desktop. You can take images, and have the pictures stored on the PC instead of or in addition to the SD card. There are tons of cool ways to work with Canon EOS Utility.
Digital Photo Professional. Digital Photo Professional (DPP) enables you to process RAW images and change photos. All of the things that you could complete with Lightroom or Photoshop - i.e. curves, color temperature, etc - can be accomplished with DPP. It’s not as complete as either Lightroom or Photoshop, but if you’re not ready to spend hundreds of dollars on the Adobe software you can start with this free Canon software. Photoshop costs a lot of moola, and Lightroom isn't free either. Download Digital Photo Professional and get started with that.
Picture Style Editor. If you have to work with RAW photo files, then
Picture Style Editor is another way to play with the development settings of RAW images. It's great for batch working RAW images. Get PSE yourself and experiment with it to learn all that it can do.
Zoombrowser EX. You can keep your digital picture collection in order with Canon's Zoombrowser EX. It allows you to copy your pictures from your digital camera and save them on the machine. You can organize and view photos, and you can also do some simple editing stuff. Get Zoombrowser EX to find out the things it can do for you.
These tools can be extremely productive, especially if you haven't bought professional level applications. Use the free stuff you can, and if you instinctively tossed your Canon utilities CD read this post to help you download and install each of the software for free.
