Lightroom's way of displaying photos by default?

[2StepSteve]

At the risk of sounding very stupid :oops:

Whenever I import a RAW file in lightroom and I click on its thumbnail to display a bigger photo something strange is happening. For about 2 seconds the photo looks pretty decent, with good colours and contrast. After those 2 seconds something is happening where the image becomes less constrasty and the colours and white balance become very out of whack.

Could anyone explain to me what lightroom is doing during those 2 seconds? Is it applying some kind of default settings to the photo? If so how can I change it? As this is happening on a fresh install of lightroom. I'm really not sure what lightroom is doing..

Thanks for any help

[René Damkot]

Is it applying some kind of default settings to the photo? If so how can I change it?

Yep. The ACR (adobe camera raw) default.
What you see in the first seconds is the built in ("Canon") thumbnail.

If you go into the develop module, you can make all "initial" settings you want, then press alt, and the "reset" button becomes a "Set default", allowing you to save these settings as the new default.

[davidcrebelxt]

ACR is known for giving pretty poor colors at times. And as Rene says, you can create your own new default... which can be difficult, and isn't a one-time thing... change the lighting conditions or shoot a subject with differnet colors, and the colors may be skewed another way. Alot of time spent getting to a good "starting point" even for further edits.

I argued this for awhile on the Adobe boards (I was decidedly NOT the first either), and most of the "experts" seemed to think I was an idiot. ('It's EASY to get the colors good and set a default' or 'Go buy a color-checker and CS2 and you can run a script to help calibrate colors... it'll only cost you $600.')' And lots of arguments about what the term "accurate" mean. But recently some working on the Adobe team have hinted that much of the discussions and compalints will soon be "moot" due to some improvements coming in ACR. Seems to validate alot of my complaints about color... otherwise why address the issue? Now we just have to wait and see how WELL they addressed the issues.

Personally, I'm done trying to get a good default profile with ACR and while waiting for the update I'm shooting alot more .jpg, and either post-poning processing most of my RAW, or I'm doing it in DPP.

[2StepSteve]

Yep. The ACR (adobe camera raw) default.
What you see in the first seconds is the built in ("Canon") thumbnail.

If you go into the develop module, you can make all "initial" settings you want, then press alt, and the "reset" button becomes a "Set default", allowing you to save these settings as the new default.

I seeee thank you for that Rene!

ACR is known for giving pretty poor colors at times. And as Rene says, you can create your own new default... which can be difficult, and isn't a one-time thing... change the lighting conditions or shoot a subject with differnet colors, and the colors may be skewed another way. Alot of time spent getting to a good "starting point" even for further edits.

I argued this for awhile on the Adobe boards (I was decidedly NOT the first either), and most of the "experts" seemed to think I was an idiot. ('It's EASY to get the colors good and set a default' or 'Go buy a color-checker and CS2 and you can run a script to help calibrate colors... it'll only cost you $600.')' And lots of arguments about what the term "accurate" mean. But recently some working on the Adobe team have hinted that much of the discussions and compalints will soon be "moot" due to some improvements coming in ACR. Seems to validate alot of my complaints about color... otherwise why address the issue? Now we just have to wait and see how WELL they addressed the issues.

Personally, I'm done trying to get a good default profile with ACR and while waiting for the update I'm shooting alot more .jpg, and either post-poning processing most of my RAW, or I'm doing it in DPP.

This was going to be my next question lol.. Why do the colours looks so off for! I know RAW is all about tweaking but you are exactly right and I agree with you, the default way the colours look are dreadful and no where near natural. I really hope the next release of ACR helps at least get some good reference and default, and somewhere to move on from.

I have a question about white balance.. I set the camera to auto white balance.. yet in lightroom there is clearly a difference when I choose "as shot" or "auto".. when shouldn't they be the same?

Many thanks

[BoySpot]

This is a smiliar point to the previous one. Adobe have an auto white balance algorithm that is different to the Canon one so your "as shot" image may be changed when using auto. This one does seem to work better than the Canon one in my experience although I do tend to play with custom white balance most of the time so I haven't got a huge amount of experience to go from.

Rob

[PixelMagic]

I have a question about white balance.. I set the camera to auto white balance.. yet in lightroom there is clearly a difference when I choose "as shot" or "auto".. when shouldn't they be the same?

The difference is that "As Shot" is an instruction to Lightroom to use the White Balance calculated by your camera and "Auto" is an instruction to Lightroom to "automatically" calculate a White Balance based on elements in the photo.

[2StepSteve]

Thanks for that so 'as shot' mostly produces better results?

I find white balance something very hard to get to grips with and I find it a bit strange that with todays tech the 400D often struggles with accurate auto white balance. I'm not all that keen on custom white balance, it seems like quite abit of hassle. Especially here on broken cloudy days where the sun is constantly going in and out.. it would mean i'd have to keep settin a manual white balance wouldn't it?

What about flash photography and bouncing, i've seen some of my shots get very messed up due to white balance being out when i'm bouncing. Are there any tips to help this?

Many thanks

[bacchanal]

In the camera I almost always use AWB outdoors and K = 2800 for tungsten lighting or Flourescent for indoors and shoot RAW.

For WB in pp I usually start with the eye dropper and try to find something white in the image. Then adjust the color temp (I usually like it a little warmer than what the dropper gives you. Lastly, I adjust the tint to try to eliminate any obvious color cast. Copy and paste the setting or sync similar images. It may take a little practice, but this should get you pretty close. I keep the default import setting as "As Shot", simply because I adjust the WB on every image anyway. The problem you'll find with "As Shot" is that it typically isn't cool enough for your average indoor tungsten lighting.
I like the black level at 4 or 5 by default, but adjust levels depending on what look I want to create with the image.
I also almost always increase Vibrance and Clarity slightly.
This is a good starting point for me and is about all I do for most images. Anything beyond that and I either go to the HSL tab or into CS3.

[2StepSteve]

Thanks for that bacchanal will give them settings a go and take it from there

[blinded]

For about 2 seconds the photo looks pretty decent, with good colours and contrast. After those 2 seconds something is happening where the image becomes less constrasty and the colours and white balance become very out of whack.
Welcome to the world of Adobe rendering. This is why I refuse to use them at this point. They totally destroy color, though I think the contrast is okay at times. Every RAW converter interprets color different, and that's the beauty of RAW though. With JPEGs, you've already done the deed and now only have color from Canon's Picture Styles. Anyways, color calibrated RAW converters include Bibble, Capture One, and DxO. The latter really are having problems, so I use Bibble (but be careful of it's "intelligent" white balance numbers, it's very advanced and non-standard). You can calibrate ACR but it won't be perfect because it's limited (more magenta skin tones). And Capture One's manual profile tool is everything ACR wants to be but isn't, but C1 overall is slow and expensive.

[danskim]

Even with the new profiles with LR 2.2 and ACR 5.2, it seems like I still can't get exactly the same starting point as DPP. Although in everything but starting point, LR is better.

My only problem seems to be with dark areas that get rendered as very blotchy by ACR/LR but don't with DPP (forehead and dark hair contrast gets blotchy when in bokeh). I can't seem to ever recover that in LR...