Why is what I see on my camera not what I see in Lightroom?

[Trenton Romulox]

On my D300, the colors of my pictures are more vivid, the contrast is better, and the image just looks better. In fact, that's how it looks in Lightroom before I click the image to edit or print it, and then it says, "Loading..." and then when it completes that, you can see the picture become more washed out, have duller colors, and less contrast. But all of the Develop bars and adjusters say that the image is 'as shot'. But, it's not. Can anyone help shed some light on the subject? Does it matter that I shoot in RAW, should I shoot in TIFF?

 

[Alex_B]

as shot refers only to the whitebalance i would guess ... although i do not use lightroom so this is just a guess.


with RAW, there is no "as shot" otherwise.

just find the settings which give you the
result you want and like. on the display you just see a preview with some specific parameters for RAW conversion.

When you load the image into lightroom, then you have to decide which conversion parameters you want. The preset ones are usually very neutral and more help the gradient detail in the images than the contrast.

 

[Alex_B]

but then again i do not use lightroom and only said what i learned from other RAW converters.

 

[Digital Matt]

It sounds like a color space issue. What color space is the camera shooting to and what is your color space, both in and out in Lightroom?

 

[Alex_B]

It sounds like a color space issue. What color space is the camera shooting to and what is your color space, both in and out in Lightroom?

first i thought so too, but if the preview looks fine?

also, lightroom should display even adobeRGB interpolated in a way that it does not look dull ... at least PS does it. A wide colour space woul only hit you when you save the images as a tiff or jpeg and then use a viewer which does not know about colour spaces.

 

[Digital Matt]

I don't use lightroom either, but my guess is that when you click to "edit" or "print", only then does it apply the actual working color space. You see the same thing in Photoshop if your working color space is Adobe RGB and you choose "save for web". The save for web dialogue shows the photo as a browser would interpret it, assuming sRGB, and if the photo has not been converted to sRGB, it will look desaturated and flat in comparison to the original.

 

[Alex_B]

I don't use lightroom either, but my guess is that when you click to "edit" or "print", only then does it apply the actual working color space. You see the same thing in Photoshop if your working color space is Adobe RGB and you choose "save for web". The save for web dialogue shows the photo as a browser would interpret it, assuming sRGB, and if the photo has not been converted to sRGB, it will look desaturated and flat in comparison to the original.

yes, but this is specific for save for web, where it makes sense.

in lightroom it would make no sense.

but then again, you never know, not everything in software makes sense


so where are the lightroom experts?

 

[Digital Matt]

Again, I'm not sure, but I think Lightroom probably has a color profile setting for printing and exporting. Much like saving for web, exporting a raw file to a jpg can cause a similar problem. If what the OP sees on the back of his camera is a wide color gamut like Adobe RGB, but what his JPGs get converted to is sRGB, he'll definitely see a difference.

 

[elsaspet]

You have to remember, you are viewing Lightroom on your Monitor. It's your monitor.....not lightroom.
Calibrate weekly. It takes a few seconds, but it will keep you from pulling your hair out.
Hope that helps.
Cindy

 

[Trenton Romulox]

You have to remember, you are viewing Lightroom on your Monitor. It's your monitor.....not lightroom.
Calibrate weekly. It takes a few seconds, but it will keep you from pulling your hair out.
Hope that helps.
Cindy

How can it be my monitor though if I see the image as I like it on the monitor, and then it does this loading thing and becomes dull. I can see the image as I do on my camera for about a second on Lightroom, then it changes. I'm gonna mess around in Lightroom's preferences tonight, it's only a trial, and it runs out tomorrow, so I need to figure out if I want to buy it or not.

 

[elsaspet]

Buy it!!!! It's a no brainer!

 

[Trenton Romulox]

Buy it!!!! It's a no brainer!

Well, I had Aperture for a while, and I liked that. So, I need to decide tonight if I want to buy Aperture again (my license expired), or get Lightroom. I'm not sure if I'm gonna get PhotoShop in the future, but I figure Lightroom plays nicely with that, you know, considering they are both Adobe products. Right?

 

[Garbz]

Ok now a post from someone who actually uses Lightroom.

The RAW data comes off the camera just like that, RAW with no settings applied. What you see on the LCD on the camera is a linear interpretation of the RAW data with a few minor camera settings applied.

Now when you open a RAW file in lightroom it cracks open the file, first thing is it applies the logarthmic contrast curves, and then the camear profile. This all really comes down to taste. With my D200 in JPG or D200 in RAW using Nikon Capture NX I find my photos come off the camera looking saturated, with way too much red, and a rather poor contrast curve which is very linear most of the way to the dark end then suddenly dips. For me I find lightroom gives a far more neutral coloured and more dynamic image.

Anyway what you can do is play with the develop settings, the colour contrast, saturation, even down the very bottom the ACR settings which control the colour profile for your camera and adjust it till you have a something that is pleasing for you as a neutral representation of what you think should come off the camera. Then save the settings as the default applied to every image that comes off the camera.

If you can not get it to look how you want then I am sorry to say Lightroom isn't for you. RAW interpretation isn't a science and different packages give different results. Fortunately there are plenty of other packages out there that work in a similar way to Lightroom.