Hi All,

If I take the exact same photo with my Nikon D50 both in RAW and JPEG they look exactly the same on the camera LCD. HOwever, when I load them into  Adobe Lightroom they look completely different. The RAW lookis far less pleasing, desaturated and dull.

I kind of understand why this is, in that the JPEG has had a certain amount of processing done to it in camera whereas the RAW is just, well, raw sensor data.

My problem is I want my RAW to look as good as the JPEG does. Does anyone have any tips on how I can do this? I did try to get the RAW to look like the JPEG by processing it in Lightroom, the intention being I could then apply this processing to every RAW file I imported but I struggled to get them looking the same. I'm sure it's possible it's just knowing where to start.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks
Gary

I had this problem but other way around (RAW over saturated, jpg dull).  In the end it was down to my monitor drivers.  Vista had loaded a Generic pnp Monitor driver instead of the correct LG driver.  Take alook in Device hardware and see what the PC thinks is the monitor

Also calibrating will help

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Mark

My DCM Gallery

Then don't shoot raw.

This is not a joke. This is actually number 1 of the Lightroom FAQ - why don't my raws look as good as the jpegs? If you prefer the jpegs then what's the point of editing a raw file to look exactly the same?

The other answer is that it's a bugger to do. There are various secret recipes on the web but the reality is that nobody knows exactly what processing Nikon do inside the camera. It's likely to be different from shot to shot. It certainly varies from model to model. If you really really want to shoot raws that look like jpegs then try opening them in Capture NX and see if you can export as DNGs (I bet you can't....). Nikon s/w is the only s/w that knows how to make Nikon raws look like Nikon jpegs.

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gmaurer:

Hi All,

If I take the exact same photo with my Nikon D50 both in RAW and JPEG they look exactly the same on the camera LCD. HOwever, when I load them into  Adobe Lightroom they look completely different. The RAW lookis far less pleasing, desaturated and dull.

I kind of understand why this is, in that the JPEG has had a certain amount of processing done to it in camera whereas the RAW is just, well, raw sensor data.

My problem is I want my RAW to look as good as the JPEG does. Does anyone have any tips on how I can do this? I did try to get the RAW to look like the JPEG by processing it in Lightroom, the intention being I could then apply this processing to every RAW file I imported but I struggled to get them looking the same. I'm sure it's possible it's just knowing where to start.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks
Gary

The Jpeg and thumbnail will look the same on your cameras LCD screen, as the thumbnail is an embedded Jpeg in your raw file. Getting the raw file to look like the cameras Jpeg is almost impossible, as you don't know what settings have been used. Normally, a tweak in curves can get you closest, but it will never be the same. This is usually a good thing, as you can decide how you want your picture to look, rather than what a technician at the camera makers decided.

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SK
The Best Photographer in the world 4th November - 5th November 2006 & 17th-18 November 2007
Oldboy’s Gallery

Hi Mark,

In actual fact I'm seeing the exact opposite. RAW is very UNsaturated and the JPEG is very punchy and vibrant looking.

I take on everyone elses point that 'if you like the look of JPEG then shoot in JPEG'. I guess after reading all the arguments on RAW vs JPEG I thought I might as well shoot RAW even for the small number of times when I actually need the benefits (ie if the exposure of a shot is really off).

Looks like shooting in JPEG is the way forward for me!

Thanks for all the very prompt replies.
Gary

My own two-penneth is simply to agree with what Jonathan has already said. It really is the No1 question raised on the Lightroom forum and generally always attracts the same sort of answer and that is - the object is not to reproduce the jpeg from the camera but to improve upon it. As Jonathan also hinted at is that there is a script available for download (found by searching the LR site) which more or less involves you capturing an image with your camera under very specific lighting conditions of a Gregmacbeth colour chart and create a Preset from it. In fact in a round about sort of way this is what Adobe have done in the creation of how your images would be rendered in Lightroom. Rumour has it that these are to be revisited and so there is a good chance that these will be improved upon in the release of LR version 2 around August time.

In fairness though I think you are also perhaps overlooking the other advantages of shooting in Raw which by the sounds of it do not need repeating and which only you can decide upon of course. The other thing that should be stressed when using LR is the importance of using a correctly calibrated and profiled monitor and to have a grasp of the different rendering intents between LR and Photoshop (if you are using that also) although both Adobe products. What happens is that Lightroom uses the "perceptual rendering intent" if present in the monitor profile, while Photoshop uses the relative colorimetric. Very often, in the manufacturer canned monitor profiles, the perceptual rendering intent is broken and Lightroom will look horrible, whilst Photoshop on the other hand will look normal. This is, unfortunately, a very common problem. Note that almost no display calibrators actually generate a perceptual rendering intent and normally Lightroom and Photoshop will therefore look exactly identical as they both use the same relative rendering intent.

 

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