zoombrowser & photoshop raw interpretations

Hey everyone...
So I've noticed a few things with the images i've been recently taking in RAW. When i open the image in zoombrowser, the colors are more vibrant and brighter. I am viewing the images with the same monitor...
This is really messing with my PP because i like the layout of zoombrowser but of course PP in photoshop... with the starting image being different, it's just frusturating...
any help?

Thanks,
Eric

I don't use zoombrowser, but I had the same problem with Adobe Bridge. Photos looked totally different than inside CS3. See if there is some sort of color management in the setup/references on ZB that's manipulating the color. That's what my problem was.

One likely "culprit" would be that the camera would be set to a Picture Style with boosts in Contrast and/or Saturation. DPP opens Raw files applying camera Picture Styles as "starting points" for your processing, whereas Adobe software opens Raw files with no contrast, saturation or sharpening values applied.

Other than that possibility, using different color spaces can cause differences like has been said. Setting DPP and Photoshop to using the same color space can even things out.

When you set the camera to output a RAW file it also creates a quarter sized jpg image that it embeds in the RAW file. It has to do that in order to have an image to display on the lcd review screen because RAW is not an image format and is not directly viewable. This small jpg is created according to the Picture Style you have set on the camera and additionally a line in the file's metadata records the Picture Style. When you open the file in Zoom Browser, ZB also uses that jpg. If you select 'convert RAW', thus opening ZB's Raw Image Task plugin, a preliminary default conversion is displayed and because ZB is a Canon product RIT sees the Picture Style notation and applies the same enhancements to the image that the camera applies to jpgs. However, when you open the RAW in Photoshop the RAW plugin, ACR, is blind to the metadata notation and uses it own defaults, which are more moderate. However, because over the years many people have made the same complaint as yours, in the latest versions of ACR, 5.x, and in Lightroom 2.x there are "Camera Profiles" that are designed to imitate the colors of Canon's Picture Styles. So set the Standard Camera Profile if you have Standard set in the camera and you should get something close to the "ZB look". Want more brightness and clarity and vibrancy? It's easy to slide these values up a bit and set the new positions as your personal default.

The bad news is that to run ACR 5.x you will need PSCS 4.

What version PS?

If CS3 or CS4, you can set a DNG profile in the "Camera Calibration" tab. Use the one named after the picture style you use. ("Camera neutral" mimics "Picture style Neutral" for instance)
With PSCS2 there's no such luck. You might try to calibrate ACR yourself.
ACR 5.4: