Help with Lightroom

Ok, I'm just starting to use Lightroom and I really like the set up. But, I get a great picture (ie. brightness, color saturation and overall detail) while in light room. Then when I export it or even print it (whether from the export or directly from Lightroom) the picture comes out drab and dark.

I'm getting really frustrated with this since the picture looks incredible in Lightroom, then I get excited to print it and it comes out drab and lifeless.

What am I doing wrong

Also, I did a search and really couldn't find anything on this

Thanks in advance

Do you have a calibrated monitor? Are the other apps you use colour managed? Are you printing using LR colour management?

Starter for 10 from me.....

Ok, monitor is calibrated but that doesn't matter because if I print or look at the JPEG (on the same montior) the pictures look completely different. In Lightroom it looks perfect, outside of it it is dark without separation between objects (ie the shadows in a dogs mout drown out her toungue when exported. While in LR the tongue is a nice pink with great detail).

As for the rest...hung?

Are you printing the JPEG from LR as well, or a different application? My guess is that color correction is on in LR in the Print module, as well as in your printer settings.

What color space are you shooting with Adobe or sRGB? LightRoom is ProPhoto so you have to be careful about expanding color gamuts and then contracting down to sRGB at Export. What colorspace are you exporting to?

What are your settings when you print from within Lightroom? Are you selecting the correct profile for your printer/paper/ink combination? Are you using Perceptual (black point compensation)?

There is a thread in the Lightroom sticky about printing with my step by step instructions on printing.

OK, I'm not really worried about the printing, that will be fixed when I get this fixed.

I'm not sure what's happening in that I ake changes in Lightroom and that is the only place I see those changes. not when I export it and not when I look at it in (as a raw file) in CS2, not when I export it as a Jpeg and not when I print.

The printing is only a symptom of what's going on, I can't see my changes anywhere except when the photo is in LR.

What ACR version are you using?

We need to know the following which can be found on the Export Dialog Box:
Preset:
File Settings:
Image Settings:

Also, we need answers to the questions above.

On the first post it seemed as though the OP was printing from LR, then the second post indicated that the images were exported from LR and printed in CS2. First post was concerned about printing, then in the second post printing wasn't the problem - the target seems to be moving.

Colour me confused.

Ok, I don't think I'm explaining myself correctly, I didn't want to make you think I was worried about the printing in my original post, I wanted to use the printing as an example of where I loose my conversion so I'll start over.

When I make changes in lightroom, I will export it to a folder called "converted" whenever I open the picture using any program but LR the picture is much darker than what it is in LR. So, I started to experiment to see under what situations it was becoming darker after it was exported. Whenever I opened it in Photoshop, Windows picture viewer, paint or any other program I'm losing brightness.

So, I thought I would try printing directly from LR to see if the loss of brightness happened then as well. And sure enough, the picture printed was much darker than what I saw in LR.

Printing is not my issue, I was trying to use that as an example of how the pic, no matter whether I open it with another progrm or print directly from LR, is losing brightness and detail in shadowed areas.

Now, I hope I cleared that up and now I'm going to read the other questions and see if I can asnwer those.

1) Monitor is calibrated
2) I've printed from both an exported Jpeg and LR - Same final product
3) Well, when I export I'm setting it to Prophoto, am I not supposed to do that?
4) What ACR version are you using? - I don't know - Sorry ;(
5) File Settings: JPEG - Quality 100 (I never changed quality)
Image Settings: Prophoto RGB - 240 pixels per inch


Is that everything?

Can you do screen captures to try and illustrate? Without seeing its difficult to understand the extent of your problem.

It might be the prophotoRBG setting. Are you exporting at that or using sRGB?

If your exported images are in the ProPhoto color space then only color managed applications will display it properly, but only if you have them set up correctly. Photoshop should be the only application other than Lightroom that you mentioned that should show th eimage correctly. But you might not have your settings correct in PS. Check out the Color Problems Sticky for your settings.

Here is the pciture I'm talking about

In Lightroom, I can see the texture on her tongue, anywhere else it's darkened to the point that the inside of her mouth is lost in shadow. Nt only that, the pink of the tongue is lost and the green in the leaves are diffused.

It's like looking through some kind of filter. I can't seem to figure out what's going on.

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