Lightroom Import Question

I've noticed this ever since I upgraded to LR4. When I import a photograph and then click to view it, the large image shows for about 2 seconds while the file is being accessed (presumably). Then once it's fully loaded, the color shifts... usually more muted than what the preview had shown. Why the color change?

I hadn't modified anything at all yet... is it LR's interpretation of the camera profile? I shoot raw, but my picture styles is set to Portrait. Is the preview image being generated with the picture style and then everything reverts once the raw file is loaded?

Unless something has changed lightroom cant access all of the data from the picture style so your Lightroom generated preview is based on the data that it can access like white balance etc. The intitial view when it loads is the embedded .jpg within the raw file that your camera uses to display on the back of the Camera. I'm guessing lightroom uses that to display until it can generate its own preveiw.

Hmm... that makes sense. I've told Lightroom to use automatically apply a camera profile upon import. I think it's at the very bottom of the develop panel. I guess it's not very close to the camera picture style?

Nathan wrote in post #16464003
Hmm... that makes sense. I've told Lightroom to use automatically apply a camera profile upon import. I think it's at the very bottom of the develop panel. I guess it's not very close to the camera picture style?

Thats what I understand and have read, but I'm no lightroom expert.

Nathan wrote in post #16464003
Hmm... that makes sense. I've told Lightroom to use automatically apply a camera profile upon import. I think it's at the very bottom of the develop panel. I guess it's not very close to the camera picture style?

A Picture Style is not just a profile; it is also a certain amount of contrast and sharpening, Canon defaults that are stronger than the moderate (some say bland) Adobe defaults. If it is important to you to emulate the appearance of the jpg you can spend some time increasing contrast and maybe adjusting saturation until you have a close resemblance to the jpg and then making a preset to be applied during import. Or you could go the other way - by reducing the in-camera processing parameters to their minimums.

Many of us in fact do as Elie suggested, setting our in-camera Picture Style to either Neutral or Faithful, and our in-camera setting for Contrast, Saturation and Sharpening all the way back (-4). That way, the previews in Lightroom as well as Digital Photo Professional (DPP, the Canon Raw processing software) and in other Raw converters will align much more nicely. The good news is that you can then "tweak" the Raw to please!