Lightroom users: Why develop defaults that way

Pindy

Can anybody with decent LR knowledge help here? (Andrew, I know you're reading!)

When I import photos and tell LR to apply the "none" develop setting, in fact, it's not the same as "zero'd". You get a default brightness of +50 (what?!) and the tone curve is set to a Medium Contrast curve. A small amount of sharpening is applied. Why is this the "default" and how does one change that? I hate having to tell it to use "Zero'd" all the time because then the thumbnails have develop badges which is misleading, even though I haven't actually applied any processing, defeating the purpose of the badge.

The same thing happens when you tell LR to Reset All Settings.

And while I'm at it, why, when you double click to "default" the brightness and Constrast sliders, do they respectively revert to +50 and +25?

billg71

This is strictly conjecture on my part, but I think Adobe's intent is to import RAW files with a reasonable amount of levels correction so they don't appear flat or dull when first imported. If you'll import a JPG with default import settings, you'll see that all Develop settings are zeroed for jpg's.

Since LR(or other 3rd party converters) don't read the in-camera settings info for RAW files, I think Adobe is making a "best-guess" correction on import so your files appear somewhat similar to what you'd see on the camera LCD. If I shoot RAW+JPEG and import both files(default setting), my RAW images do look pretty close to the JPEG's. Of course, this depends on your camera settings.

It would be nice to be able to make changes to the default but it looks like Adobe hasn't gotten around to including that feature. Maybe we'll get that in a future release. I agree, having the Develop icon show up in all the photos you've just imported is definitely confusing.

I've played around with various presets for import and have finally settled on the default for general use. It gets me something to look at and judge overall exposure and photo quality. If the photo's a keeper, I'll go into Develop and tweak it further. If it's not, I'll either just leave it alone or delete it. I found that when I was using the General-Zeroed preset, I was doing a lot of Quick-Develop adjustments just to make a decision to keep or discard a particular photo. So using the default settings saves me a little time.

Of course, YMMV.

Bill

Terrence

If you want to use your own defaults, create a new preset with all the settings you want. Open any photo in the Develop module and set all the sliders and curves and what not to where you want them as the default. Then select "New preset" from the "Develop" menu. Check all the settings you want included, then click "Update". Now you have exactly what you want.

Select that preset when you import photos. I wish you could default to a specified preset, but I don't think you can.

You could also setup a watch folder and apply the preset automatically using "Auto Import". Then you'd simply drop your shots on that folder and the magic happens.

arodney

Pindy wrote:

Can anybody with decent LR knowledge help here? (Andrew, I know you're reading!)

When I import photos and tell LR to apply the "none" develop setting, in fact, it's not the same as "zero'd". You get a default brightness of +50 (what?!) and the tone curve is set to a Medium Contrast curve. A small amount of sharpening is applied. Why is this the "default" and how does one change that? I hate having to tell it to use "Zero'd" all the time because then the thumbnails have develop badges which is misleading, even though I haven't actually applied any processing, defeating the purpose of the badge.

Since Raw data is linear encoded, if you zero out all the tone settings, you get a very flat unappealing image. These are after all, defaults you can over-ride.

When Thomas Knoll first released Camera Raw, the default rendering was rather flat. Its actually better to start this way before toning the image using the various controls. Most users didn't like this initial rendering and complained. So in later versions, the default become more "in-camera JPEG" like, some users complained they didn't have enough flatness as a starting point. This all goes to the old saying about trying to please all the people, all the time.

The important thing to understand is, you can build a default setting and apply it on all or some images upon import. If you want to zero out everything, by all means do so, save a custom preset. On import, select it. You'll get what you want from the get-go with no harm done (Raw is Raw), no issues changing your mind (its just textual instructions for eventual rendering).