raw and jpeg in lightroom

[Eric DeWitt]

Interesting thing i noticed yesterday when opening up some shots of some of the fall colors by the house.   The images were shot in raw, which is a bit unusual for me, but i had the camera set that way from a shoot i did for a family members senior photos.    I cranked up the in-camera (canon 30d) saturation as i really wanted the color to punch.  When i imported the shots into lightroom, for a moment, they looked great with the vivid color, and then as lightroom rendered them they switched to a much more muted color tone.  Lightroom must display the embedded jpeg preview first i guess until it renders its own.

I attached 2 shots here, one is the lightroom raw file, unprocessed, and the other is a jpeg, created from the raw file using canon’s DPP software.  Big difference for sure.  I did some reading on adobe’s site, and it said that lightroom uses the Prophoto RGB space for raw files that don’t have a colorspace attached to them.

Anyone else dealt with this type of issue?  I know alot of you guys shoot raw almost exclusively.  I spent a few minutes trying to come up with a mix in lightroom to make the raw file match the jpeg, but wasn’t terribly successful.  Personally, this really bugs me that what i see on the back of the camera doesn’t match what lightroom shows me, and i wouldn’t mind shooting raw, but i don’t want to have to run everything thru DPP to get the results i want.  

Unedited RAW file from lightroom

JPEG from Canon DPP (this would be identical to a in-camera jpeg shot)

Edit:

[anonymous]

Eric, you can edit rendered files in photoshop and set it to handle raw in adobe rgb by going to EDIT-PREFERENCE-EXTERNAL EDITOR in lightroom.

See if that helps.

PS Lightroom helps says, “Raw photo files generally don’t have embedded color profiles. For raw files, the Develop module assumes a wide color space based on the color values of the ProPhoto RGB color space. ProPhoto RGB encompasses most colors that cameras can record.”

Does it do in Library mode?

[Eric DeWitt]

It appears develop mode and library mode show the colors in the same way.

[john michael white]

Currently I have a 10D and would think we are dealing with similar settings here.  If you shoot RAW (I use the Adobe RGB RAW), at least on the 10D, you can not adjust the parameters.  The +4 or -4 parameters you can set in camera only affect the JPEG files (and modes you shoot in that produce only JPEG files).  I think this may be your issue.

When I get my RAW images into DPP, I usually bump the saturation up several notches.  Then I do a copy recipe and paste it to all the rest of the images.

[Neal Osborn]

Eric –

Lightroom 2.1 came out today and is supposed to specifically address the known issues with cameraw raw (raw) support.  Download the upgrade and let us know if that helps.

LR 2.1 read me file http://www.adobe.com/special/photoshop/Lightroom_21_ReadMe.pdf

[Eric DeWitt]

I haven’t downloaded and tested this yet, but i read on the adobe camera raw site this weekend that there are new specific camera profiles you can download, and then select in the “camera calibration” panel under the devolop module.

[Neal Osborn]

Here is a great video which details the issues of Lightroom 2.1 and Camera Raw.  Pay attention to the first half in which they discuss the “conspiracy” about LR 2.1 not being compatible with the new Camera Raw 5.1 and CS4.  According to the discussion, LR 2.1 has the same CR functionality as PSCS4.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc5jfzXQ3iI

Here is another good article on the topic.  http://news.softpedia.com/news/Adobe-Updates-Lightroom-Camera-Raw-Plugin-96295.shtml

Apparently LR uses a Camera Raw plugin as part of the application and you don’t have to download the individual camera files in order to calibrate your own profile.

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