Lightroom auto editing my photos?

I've been noticing this a for a while but haven't been able to find an answer... When I upload my photos in RAW directly into LR3 all settings remain as the camera has determined them but I notice while the photo is loading from a preview the brightness changes (usually a little darker). Is LR3 editing my photos when I import them without me knowing?

Ive checked the import screen and everything is set to leave as the camera has determined... Thoughts?

What Lightroom does is perform an initial "rendering" that will differ from the jpeg preview that was embedded within your Raw file. So, when you first import your image you will see the preview but it will quicky change to the LR preview, which will have no Picture Style applied. Most of those in-camera settings are simply ignored because they are proprietary Canon values.

You can alter things a bit by setting an Adobe Calibration profile to be set automatically. But, many people prefer to use Neutral in Lightroom and in the camera Picture Style so they don't start out with the possibility of an unwanted profile applied (although you can change them at will).

If you want to make use of the Canon Picture Styles in your Raw processing the app of choice is the Canon Raw software Digital Photo Professional (DPP) that came with your camera. It's a nice app to play with as you are learning about Raw processing, and for future reference.

tonylong wrote in post #11545559
What Lightroom does is perform an initial "rendering" that will differ from the jpeg preview that was embedded within your Raw file. So, when you first import your image you will see the preview but it will quicky change to the LR preview, which will have no Picture Style applied. Most of those in-camera settings are simply ignored because they are proprietary Canon values.

You can alter things a bit by setting an Adobe Calibration profile to be set automatically. But, many people prefer to use Neutral in Lightroom and in the camera Picture Style so they don't start out with the possibility of an unwanted profile applied (although you can change them at will).

If you want to make use of the Canon Picture Styles in your Raw processing the app of choice is the Canon Raw software Digital Photo Professional (DPP) that came with your camera. It's a nice app to play with as you are learning about Raw processing, and for future reference.

This totally makes sense... In LR the sliders on sharpening automatically show at 25 for example, is this a default setting as a result of lightroom or is the RAW data causing this? I would imagine it would start at 0 zero but it never has...

You'll notice that there a few sliders that LR has set to a non-zero value by default -- whether it is desired or not, whether it makes sense or not. For example, the Blacks slider is set at a low non-zero value that gives a little latitude to back things off a bit, although plenty of people like a "higher black point". But if you want to see something realy scary, look at the Brightness slider, set to 50 -- why would they do that? I dunno -- look at what happens if you put that slider to zero!

DPP has another interesting little checkbox in the Raw tab -- the Linear option. It's unchecked by default, but it sounds like it must be a good thing, right? So check that puppy and see what happens to your nice-looking image!

I imagine the Lightroom sharpness has that default simply because the developers assume that there needs to be some sharpening applied to digital images just to overcome the anti-alias filter's effect of softening the image. In fact, here's a fun little test -- view an image at 100% with its Details panel (sharpness/Noise Reduction) set to their defaults, then toggle that panel on and off by clicking the little button at the top left (next to the Details label) -- you can get an idea of what that default setting does.

And, the good news is that you are free to create your own Default settings -- put things the way you'd like and then hold down Alt/Opt and note that the Reset button on the bottom-right of the Develop panel turns to Set as Default!

Tony
If you don't mind, a couple of questions for you.

1. how many photos might you download at one time?
2. of the ones you download, how many will you edit?
3. how much time does this generally take you?

Thanks for the response, I am curious what an experienced person does, although I guess everyone is quite different.

tonylong wrote in post #11561895
You'll notice that there a few sliders that LR has set to a non-zero value by default -- whether it is desired or not, whether it makes sense or not. For example, the Blacks slider is set at a low non-zero value that gives a little latitude to back things off a bit, although plenty of people like a "higher black point". But if you want to see something realy scary, look at the Brightness slider, set to 50 -- why would they do that? I dunno -- look at what happens if you put that slider to zero!

DPP has another interesting little checkbox in the Raw tab -- the Linear option. It's unchecked by default, but it sounds like it must be a good thing, right? So check that puppy and see what happens to your nice-looking image!

I imagine the Lightroom sharpness has that default simply because the developers assume that there needs to be some sharpening applied to digital images just to overcome the anti-alias filter's effect of softening the image. In fact, here's a fun little test -- view an image at 100% with its Details panel (sharpness/Noise Reduction) set to their defaults, then toggle that panel on and off by clicking the little button at the top left (next to the Details label) -- you can get an idea of what that default setting does.

And, the good news is that you are free to create your own Default settings -- put things the way you'd like and then hold down Alt/Opt and note that the Reset button on the bottom-left of the Develop panel turns to Set as Default!

This is why I love this forum! Complete answers

Thanks Tony, I'll play around with it and come back if I got more questions, I'm sure I will!

Pbelarge, the answers to all the above are, essentially, "it depends"!

For, say, sports, events, or a concentrated active shoot, say street shooting, It's not uncommon for me to fill up an 8 Gig card with 400-500 Raw images then pull out the next one. 1000 shot days are not unheard of, and I'm not a pro. But, this is typically the quickest stuff to post-process.

For a more casual walkabout, maybe 200-400 shots, for wildlife pretty much a full card is a common thing, and then there are the 50, 100, more or less occasions.

Landscape-type shooting, typically lower in numbers but much more exacting in post-processing.

Whatever I shoot in a "session" downloaded, a card at a time. Start a download, fiddle about -- a good SB 2.0 connection can download more than a Gig per minute and then the LR importing process takes some time -- grab some coffee or pop a beer!

The "keeper rate" will again vary, depending on what you are shooting and how "adapted" you are, conditions, etc. The stuff that can drive you nuts is an active thing, such as a sport, that you are pretty attuned to "getting the shot" and, especially when the light conditions are favorable, I end up with say 500 to 1000 shots that don't want to be dumped!

But then since I've done a lot of birding in adverse elements I've been forced to ISO 3200 and still slow shutter speeds and end up tossing half or more of my photos.

The good news is that if you are shooting things that you've learned to shoot well, you need relatively little post processing. Culling the bad ones, doing the quick stuff and Syncing across batches of photos is not an excruciatingly slow process. It's when you are shooting a scene that needs and deserves some tender care, typically because of challenging outdoor lighting conditions, that you want to stop and spend longer on an image or images.

I enjoy the shoots where you can do a quick conversion, amost as quick and easy as shooting jpegs, but real rewards come when you move into those challenging scenes and massage some beauty out of them. The "digital darkroom" lets us play for all these things!

Synapxe -
By coincidence I read a very good article yesterday that in part touches on your question: http://wwwimages.adobe​.com …dfs/pscs3_rende​rprint.pdf The article is by Karl Lang, is published by Adobe and in general describes his transition from film to digital. If I may quote a few lines:

"Raw processors like Lightroom start with a neutral rendering and allow you to construct your vision from this starting point. This can cause some confusion and frustration among new users. If you are used to looking at your camera JPEG, the initial rendering of the Raw file won’t match it for several reasons. A camera JPEG is the result of an automated raw processor inside the camera. That processor doesn’t accept input from you. Conceptually, you can think of the camera as setting all the sliders and adjustments for you, based on a best guess of what you want. Each camera company has invested years of research developing the internal processor for their cameras and the algorithms that predict how to adjust each image.
When you open a Raw file into Lightroom, it doesn’t attempt to guess what you want. It makes no assumptions. Instead, it applies a set of default positions for each of its adjustments. These adjustments throw out little of the original scene data and place the scene into the output-referred image-state in a standard, repeatable way. This allows you to see what’s “in the negative.” From this we can get a good idea of what scene information we have to work with. After a short learning curve you will begin to understand this initial rendering, and know instantly how to get what you want. It’s good to think of this like a standard exposure of the enlarger and a standard time in the developer bath. You have to start somewhere, and then make a change.
To realize our vision of the scene, our art, we must be able to see what we have to work with and then manipulate it towards our goal. The neutral starting point is a reference that the artist will learn to appreciate"

It occurred to me that at the outset of his work the designer of a RAW converter has to make a basic decision about what audience his program will serve. But of course Adobe wants to sell to as wide a market as is possible, so LR/ACR is a bit of a compromise, on one hand its defaults are neutral and bland and retain all the available data, in order to serve the needs of the advanced user (who shoots in RAW precisely because he wants to maximize his control of the final image) but on the other hand it's defaults are enough to provide a decent enough rendering that the beginner won't be scared off. Canon (and the other camera makers) are aware that a high proportion of the advanced users of their cameras will use third party converters. An analysis of their market shows a much higher proportion of users who are less advanced in their requirements and expectations and want fast, easy and minimally user-controlled solutions, so DPP's defaults reproduce the camera's jpg rendering. LR attempts to serve this segment by providing a long list of "presets" that will do the thinking for you, as well as a couple auto controls. And there is also a "zeroed" preset that goes to the other extreme, although there are still some adjustments that are "hard-wired" and without user access. (As a side note, somewhat inconsistently one of these built-in adjustments, the application of a gamma curve to the naturally linear RAW data, can be cancelled in DPP, allowing the few people who discover this checkbox the opportunity to design their own curve.)