Adobe lightroom RAW processing

[jrad]

So I have just started using Adobe Lightroom and really love how it works but have noticed a strange "problem" when looking through my pictures in both the catalog and develop modules.

When you initally load an image the colours generally look spot on, as in they are not too flat. But once the raw processing is done, the picture just seems to switch to a more flat version with less appealing colour and look slightly more washed out. I probably wouldn't care as the photos are still nice but when you see the difference in front of you its quite annoying.

Someone at work said something about monitor calibration but it seems weird that they look great and then flatten out once the raw file is processed. Has anyone else experienced this?

Thanks in advance!

 

[steve.82]

Before processing the preview image 'look' possibly depends on the camera's jpeg settings. Then it gets processed with all settings at zero and looks washed out I'm guessing, so you need to learn how to tweak all the many settings to get it looking better than the original preview image.

All a bit of a stab in the dark, but that's my best guess.

 

[incapete]

We've answered this question a lot in the past - I think the last thread was titled 'Lightroom degrading images before my eyes'.

EDIT: found it

Essentially, even when you shoot raw only there is a jpeg embeded into the file which has all of your camera's processing applied to it (sharpening, saturation, white balance etc).
Lightroom uses this embeded jpeg as it's initial preview of your raw image when you first open it.
Once the actual raw file has loaded it displays the 'correct' version that has no sharpening, no saturation adjustment and no white balance applied - you need to do all of this yourself to produce a decent looking image from a raw file.

One option to help if this is annoying you is to apply a bunch of processing options and save them as a preset which you can choose to apply during the import of your images.


You've hopefully chosen to shoot in raw in order to give you the flexibility to do all of these adjustments yourself - that initial 'nice' version has had all of these already applied by the camera. If you prefer the first version then you may as well shoot in jpeg and save the disk space.