RAW/NEF into LR (Colors and or Exposure changes?)

Zerodog

I have been shooting RAW/ NEF and importing files from my D90 with Nikon transfer then opening them in Lightroom 2. I get a brief preview of my image that usually looks awesome, then it changes. It usually looks flatter or more blown out? It is hard to put a finger on because it does change fast. For instance some clouds. The quick preview has definition but when it changes not nearly as much. Is this LR disregarding things such as camera WB, Active D lighting, and exposure compensation?

rsquared

Zerodog wrote:

Is this LR disregarding things such as camera WB, Active D lighting, and exposure compensation?

Sort of... The problem is most manufacturer's raw files are in a proprietary format, and LR doesn't necessarily know how to interpret that data. I'm pretty sure it reads the WB, but not most of the other stuff*. The reason you see the preview you like for a split second is that in order to give you a quick preview, LR will show the jpg that is generated by the camera and embedded in the raw file until it generates it's own. How long you see that jpg depends on your computer speed and how quick LR can generate it's own preview.

The trick to using LR is to adjust a file until you get it to what matches your preferred settings and then save that as a preset. You can set LR up to automatically apply a preset upon importing, and you can even tie that preset to specific camera models, serial numbers, and/or ISOs. (The latter being nice for noise reduction settings)

* Exposure compensation adjusts your shutter speed or aperture at the time the picture is taken, depending on which mode you shoot in. Those are not adjusted in post.

arodney

The initial preview is the tiny JPEG thumbnail that is embedded into the Raw, processed using the camera itself (as if you shot a separate JPEG). When any Raw processor begins to deal with the Raw, it builds a high quality, large preview which is based on its own rendering engine, hence, they don’t usually match. You can alter the default LR rendering to attempt a closer match. But its the new preview that’s the reality of the rendering situation here.

rwells

The easiest way for me, was to shoot in camera RAW + JPG. Then import into LR2. After LR2 has made it's preview/view using the default setting, simply take a RAW image and process it to look like the JPG of the same image. (I'm assuming here that's the look your after) When you get the RAW file looking like the JPG, save that as your new LR2 default setting.

Now, your RAW images will look like how your camera records JPG's.

TheSuede

Active D-lighting is a proprietary software technique owned by Nikon, several other alternatives exist - but no other softwares than NX can use ALL of the information that's stored in the raw. You already have gotten some answers, and the most important part is to save a "preset" that you've manually come up with in LR as the "import standard preset".

Next up is colour calibration... "Adobe standard" is good, but needs some tweaking. The other usual suspect to include as the "normal" input standard is "camera standard", which in the D90 case is the same as IIIa. If you have LR2.3 or newer, this should be preinstalled in you copy. Select colour calibration by changing preset in the lowermost frame in the "develop" pane.