[Closed] Adobe Lightroom - where's my colour going?

i don't use lightroom but you are using sRGB which is a 'small' colourspace and lightroom uses pro-photo 'melissa' colourspace which is even larger than adobe1998. so i'm guessing that you see a preview of melissa (even though your monitor cannot reproduce the whole colourspace) but when you output the file it's sRGB so you see a change between preview in lightroom and the file opened in photoshop.

you may find an answer here

[url=http://] http://forums.adobe.com/thread/354471 [/url]

thanks Gary. Looks like it's an issue with Lightroom 🙁

Hi there,

What is happening by the sound of it is that Lightroom has been set up (in error possible) to automatically adjust the photos on import. When you import check at the bottom of the dialogue box, you should may see something there. Sorry for the vagueness but I am at work and dont have access to Lightroom. I will have a look tonight and report back. 🙂

Russ

i know what you mean Russ but i've (well i'm pretty sure i have) eliminated that possibility

Everyone is wrong 😀
Assuming you are shooting RAW, what you see initially is the in camera created embedded jpg. Then as Lightroom processes the image it creates it's own preview based on it's rather bland and poor Defaults. You can either change these to try and match your camera processing and save these as the import defaults or use Canon DPP or Nikon Capture NX (Or View NX for free) Both of Which preserve and apply in camera setting while allowing you to change them after shot.

The Latest Lightroom has Camera profiles for the newer Nikon colour modes in the Profiles section. These mimic the in camera colours quite well, but in the long run Nothing processes a NEF file quite like Capture NX if you can live with it's hang ups.. Which I can!

It's nothing to do with Colour Space Lightroom works in ProPhotoRGB until you select a space at export. RAW files don't have a colour space until they are de-mosaiced into an image.

[i]"Color spaces, color profiles, and tonal response curves

It’s not necessary for you to understand how Lightroom manages color internally, but the following information may be useful in your workflow.

A color space describes a range or gamut of colors. Various devices in your photographic workflow have different color gamuts in which they can record, store, edit, and output photos. A color profile defines a color space so that Lightroom knows how to manage and convert colors in your photo.

Raw photo files generally don’t have embedded color profiles. For raw files, the Develop module assumes a wide color space based on the color values of the ProPhoto RGB color space. ProPhoto RGB encompasses most colors that cameras can record.

A color profile is also defined by a gamma value, or more accurately, its tonal response curve. The tonal response curve defines how tonal values in the raw image are mapped. To provide useful information in the histogram and RGB value display, Lightroom assumes a gamma value of approximately 2.2. More accurately, it uses a tonal response curve similar to the tonal response curve of the sRGB color space.

While Lightroom uses a tonal response curve to provide information for the histogram and RGB values, it manipulates the raw data before it is tone mapped. Working in this linear gamma avoids many of the artifacts that can result in working with a tone-mapped image.

The Library module stores previews in the Adobe RGB color space. These previews are also used when printing in draft mode.

For rendered files such as TIFF, JPEG, and PSD files, Lightroom uses the image’s embedded color profile to display the image, histogram, and color values. If the image doesn’t have a profile, Lightroom assumes the sRGB profile, and the image may not look as expected on your monitor."
[/i]

raw files don't have a colourspace but it appears lightroom will output to sRGB or if the embedded jpeg preview has a colourspace (i'm guessing it will take this from the jpeg setting from the camera even if you are only shooting raw)

It's nothing to do with Colour Space

I use CaptureNX and find it excellent for developing Nikon RAWs (NEFs). I couldn't persuade Lightroom to get close. So I agree with micky it may just be crap default settings in Lightroom, rather than a colour space issue.

I have Photoshop but never really use it as I do all my developing and editing within NX which is an excellent, if slighty idiosyncratic, bit of kit.

Not a Lightroom user, but this certainly sounds weird - I'd have expected the software to convert the RAW file (which has no specific colour space) and display it properly using its own preferred colour space (Prophoto). Are you sure there are no preferences set somewhere to tell it to do something non-standard?

For the CaptureNX(2) question, it is excellent for NEF files, even if the interface is a bit weird, and the U-points take some getting used to. I still find, though, that in the end you can't avoid Photoshop for maximum capability and flexibility.

Just to complicate the issue - I find CaptureOne even better than NX2 for converting NEF files 🙂

mickyfinn is correct, I had the same issue and it was driving me crackers for a long time.

I now choose between the Nikon camera profiles, neutral, vivid, portrait or whatever for processing the RAW files and it looks much better.

I generally do this by highlighting a batch and changing one, then syncing the change. Its in the very bottom right of the develop settings, under camera profiles.

Not sure how to change the default though!

i've just added a preset from a flickr user for the D300 which seems to help a little, not brilliant though

seems a lot of people have problems with lightroom

It's nothing to do with Colour Space

really? i think it's everything to do with colourspace as that's central to the differences in output and preview Mike is getting.
i don't see the point in using another program that changes the workflow as surely that's the advantage of lightroom over the shonky nikon/canon software?

Sorry you are this time wrong. It's everything to do with the difference between the in camera jpeg (Which includes the camera luminence curve, sharpening and saturation settings among others) and the default Raw rendering of the ACR engine.
I miss the database side of Lightroom but after re-trying to get as good as results as NX when Adobe released the Nikon Profiles. I just couldn't. This is the NX Version of the test RAW and after a lot of trying I just couldn't get Lightroom to get the sharpness and clarity without it looking way overdone.

[url= http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3321/3476544343_ea2869b4b2_o.jp g" target="_blank">http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3321/3476544343_ea2869b4b2_o.jp g"/> [/img][/url]

I now use Expression Media (MS but it works) to manage my files and NX for the processing. The beauty of Expression is it's one of the few DAM tools which will allow you to turn off it's RAW engine and to only show the embedded preview of the RAW file.

Sorry you are this time wrong. It's everything to do with the difference between the in camera jpeg (Which includes the camera luminence curve, sharpening and saturation settings among others) and the default Raw rendering of the ACR engine.

so nothing to do with the sRGB colourspace of the camera jpeg or the adobe1988 of the preview or the 'working' pro-photo(mellisa)?
seems odd that out of gamut colours when converting from different colourspaces are not rendered/interpreted to their nearest in-gamut colour, they look the same whether a preview or an outputted file?

if the issue has nothing to do with the colour profile why does the quoted text above (from adobe) even mention sRGB/adobe1988/Pro-photoRGB?
when you say it's nothing to do with colourspace why not leave it unassigned with no profile? maybe adobe don't know what they are doing?

when you say it's nothing to do with colourspace why not leave it unassigned with no profile? maybe adobe don't know what they are doing?

Nope it's as simple as you're over complicating mrmichaelwright's issue. As stated above by myself and other people it's to do with what you see first is the preview embedded in the RAW file then when you click on it Lightroom chucks that and render's it's own preview which will look completely different to the Camera's version as it can't read the in camera settings, Colour space being one of them but only 1 and at this stage less important than the luminence curve.

Nope it's as simple as you're over complicating mrmichaelwright's issue. As stated above by myself and other people it's to do with what you see first is the preview embedded

in the RAW file then when you click on it Lightroom chucks that and render's it's own preview

which will look completely different to the Camera's version as it can't read the in camera settings,
Colour space being one of them but only 1 and at this stage less important than the luminence curve.

sorry i thought you said the profiles had nothing to do with the variations in appearance when importing/previewing/developing and viewing the outputted file.

now i know why i stuck with capture one!

the second page of this pdf gives some useful information
[url= http://www.ppmag.com/reviews/200701_rodneycm.pdf ]http://www.ppmag.com/reviews/200701_rodneycm.pdf[/url]

It's worth noting (not sure if it's applicable here) but most internet browsers don't support imbedded colour profiles, so what you see in lightroom (which supports imbedded colour profiles) isn't what you'll see in an application that doesn't.

If you look at this picture, its a screen grab of lightroom, and a Firefox window of the same picture. You can see that the colours are really quite different.

You can enable it in firefox, but I can't remember how you do it, a google should sort it out for you.

[img] [/img]

[url= http://diglloyd.com/diglloyd/free/WebBrowserColor/index.html ]http://diglloyd.com/diglloyd/free/WebBrowserColor/index.html[/url]

yeah i sorted out the browser colour profile thing a while ago. it's why i was working in sRGB as that is the default for non profile aware browsers, i have profiling enabled in firefox as well