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marcelv66180642
Participant
February 15, 2017
Answered

Lightroom changes exposure of pictures when they are clicked

  • February 15, 2017
  • 3 replies
  • 11674 views

Hi there,

I've been working with Lightroom (currently 5.7) for a long time but these last few months I noticed something really annoying, and I don't understand whats going on.

Whenever I import a bunch of photo's from my Canon 6D and import them in Lightroom, and I am working in the Develop mode, the pictures change very often (not always) as soon as I click on them in the row at the bottom.

The picture preview above looks okay for a second and then something happens as if the exposure goes down, making the look of the picture worse every time, so my guess is that the original look is the correct one....

It seems as if some kind of preset is done even though I dont do anything.

Did I enable some kind of auto-correction on the pictures or something?

Marcel

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer JP Hess

    I don't think so. If these are images that were just imported then Lightroom is displaying the embedded JPEG preview that includes all of the in-camera settings that have been applied. Lightroom does not read those settings. As soon as Lightroom imports raw images it displays that JPEG image until it has time to generate the preview of the raw image data. So if you haven't given Lightroom time to generate raw previews you would experience what you are describing.

    3 replies

    S
    Sarah24641405dvlv
    Participant
    May 28, 2022

    THIS IS THE WORST! It ruins the workflow, adds hours of time to the shoot processing. I'm so frustrated myself. I have this  on video. It vanishes so quickly its like it isnt happening. Ive had this issue for years.

     

      TheDigitalDog
      TheDigitalDog
      Inspiring
      May 28, 2022
      @Sarah24641405dvlv wrote:

      THIS IS THE WORST! It ruins the workflow, adds hours of time to the shoot processing. I'm so frustrated myself. I have this  on video. It vanishes so quickly its like it isnt happening. Ive had this issue for years.

       

      This is a five year old post (with a correct and accurate answer) so what exactly is your problem with Lightroom Classic? 

      Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"
      JP Hess
      JP Hess
      Inspiring
      May 29, 2022

      Things have changed dramatically (in my opinion) since this thread began years ago. Now, if you want your images to import and look more the way you expect them to look, you can set your own defaults more effectively than you could previously. I like to suggest users watch and implement the techniques taught in this tutorial. It works well for me, and provides an excellent starting point for new imports for my work.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGCnR9qEqA4&t=29s 

      elie_dinur
      elie_dinur
      Participating Frequently
      February 16, 2017

      "...it's just strange that I havent noticed this before, maybe I wasn't paying enough attention to it!"

      Maybe you have changed your camera settings; for instance turned on Auto Light Optimization or Highlight Tone Priority. Maybe you set a different Picture Style, switched it from the flatter ones like Neutral or Faithful to a "jazzier" P.S. like Standard or Landscape. Or changed the custom parameters of a P.S., sharpening, contrast, saturation and hue. These image characteristics are all products of the processing the camera does in order to make jpgs and they are not inherent in the Raw data. Lightroom does not do them by default nor does it automatically read metadata notations and try to recreate camera processing. It does its own Adobe processing and Adobe's opinion about what makes for a good default starting point for Raw editing and the camera maker's (Canon, in this case) opinion about what makes for a good looking and camera-selling jpg are likely to be quite different.

      Nevertheless, as Jim has indicated, you can change LR's defaults to accord more with your own desired starting point. Change the default camera profile from Adobe Standard to one of the reverse-engineered imitations of Canon's profiles, for a start. Just remember that Adobe processing is not Canon processing and they never can be entirely identical. Personally, I like what I can do with Adobe tools; if I wanted to recreate Canon processing, I would use the software provided with the camera.

        JP Hess
        JP HessCorrect answer
        Inspiring
        February 15, 2017

        I don't think so. If these are images that were just imported then Lightroom is displaying the embedded JPEG preview that includes all of the in-camera settings that have been applied. Lightroom does not read those settings. As soon as Lightroom imports raw images it displays that JPEG image until it has time to generate the preview of the raw image data. So if you haven't given Lightroom time to generate raw previews you would experience what you are describing.

          M
          marcelv66180642Author
          Participant
          February 15, 2017

          Thank you for your answer,

          With embedded JPEG preview do you mean the JPG that the camera saves with the RAW file on my card?

          (I have set my camera to save both)

          How can the default RAW image be different from the jpg image then? I assumed that the JPG and the RAW image is saved in the camera with the same settings I have in the camera? Or does Lightroom reset some of these RAW settings to a different value?

          If for example I make a pictures with whitebalance completely towards blue colors, would the RAW picture look normal in Lightroom? I never gave this any thought before and never noticed it before...

          Marcel

          JP Hess
          JP Hess
          Inspiring
          February 15, 2017

          The raw image itself has an embedded JPEG preview. That is what is displayed in the LCD on your camera because the camera cannot read raw images either. I'm not talking about an extra JPEG image. This is a preview that is inside of the raw image. When Lightroom downloads you are brought images it depends on this JPEG preview in the import dialog and in Lightroom until it has time to generate the preview for the raw image data. Remember that Lightroom is a raw image editor/processor. But it takes time to generate  a preview from the raw data. The raw data is not image data, not pixels. That's why it has to be converted. And that's why Lightroom must use the embedded JPEG preview.

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