Skip to main content
Inspiring
July 20, 2025
Question

raw opening as jpeg

  • July 20, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 766 views

I shoot in raw + jpeg on my sony a7iv, and normally when i put a raw file into photoshop it opens in camera raw as the actual arw file. but some reason now whenever i open it, it opens in camera raw as a the jpg file. when i open it on my computer it normally shows the jpg preview but then renders the actual raw image but in photoshop its only showing the jpg. my raw files are all .arw and stay in arw when opened. ive attatched screenshots of all my camera raw settings and what opens compared to the jpg and arw.

2 replies

Legend
July 20, 2025

How did you get this jpg file? Is it a file directly from the camera or have you already opened the ARW in Photoshop, adjusted it and saved the result in jpg? In the second case, next to the ARW file you will have a *.xmp file in which all the settings will be stored.

 

You can either delete *.xmp file or select the Reset to default option in camera raw

 

Inspiring
July 20, 2025

as i said, i shoot in raw + jpg and my camera just saves 2 seperate images. so i havent done any editing at all, some reason when the arw file is opened it looks like the jpg in camera raw.

Rob_Cullen
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 21, 2025

My couple of thoughts on the question-

"when the arw file is opened it looks like the jpg in camera raw."  Quite possible. eg. If you set the camera to Monochrome Style, then ACR (and the Lightroom apps) will honour the Monochrome camera profile and show the raw file as monochrome. Similarly for other Camera Styles (Vivid, Landscape, etc).  

 

This setting ("Automatically ....) in Camera Raw preferences means that when you 'Open' any JPG or TIF file it will always appear in ACR before you then open it in Photoshop.

 

 

 

Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.1.1, Photoshop 27.3.1, ACR 18.1.1, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0.2 .
D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 20, 2025

If it opens in ACR as a jpeg, with the .jpg extension, then it was a jpeg to begin with. There's no way a raw file can directly open in the form of a jpeg, without saving it as a jpeg first. 

 

If the jpeg has been edited in ACR previously, those edits are stored as metadata in the file header. It will not be baked into the pixels. So it can happen that ACR displays the pixel data briefly first, and then applies the metadata ACR edits after a fraction.

 

There's a setting to treat jpeg/raw pairs as separate photos, if off, the jpegs are hidden. I always shoot raw exclusively, so I haven't really looked at what that setting does.

Inspiring
July 20, 2025

i shoot in raw + jpeg and my camera saves them as 2 seperate files one .jpg and one .arw so the 2 files i have are directly from the camera and have no been edited. as soon as i open the .arw file in acr it looks like the jpg.