Why LIGHTROOM is changing how your RAW Files look | A Guide to Lightroom PREVIEWS

In this Video we are going to talk about one of the big Lightroom Classic CC 2023 mysteries, that new users (and probably even seasoned users) encounter. And that is Lightroom changing the colours/look of your RAW Files upon importing.
I explain how RAW files actually work so that we can get a general understanding of why this happens and we then take an in depth look at all the different Lightroom previews, how they work, when to use which and how we can maybe work around Lightroom messing with our RAW files.

[@OneManTrail]

This was the clearest explanation I have ever heard on preview generation, and I’ve been watching LR videos forever.

[@marcelohm123]

Thank you! This means a lot to me.

[@tasercs]

Thank you. Finally, I actually understand exactly what is going on with previews. Such a concise and knowledgeable tutorial. Thanks for doing that, it has really helped me (and no doubt many others).

[@marcelohm123]

Thank you so much for your feedback. That's exactly why I made this video and why I tend to always take a bit longer to explain things :D

[@bokehbohm]

this came up on my discover page and was shocked when i scrolled down and saw you only have 100 subs, you deserve many more! love the high quality content

[@BarrySachais]

I agree with you. Two days ago I came across one of Marcel's videos and checked it out. I was very impressed with his teaching style. Two days ago, when I first watched a tutorial, there were 80+ subscribers. Today there are several more. So picking up about 20 more subscribers in just a few days indicates that as word gets around, he will be a go-to person for tutorials, and rightfully so.

[@marcelohm123]

Thank you! I actually just reached 100 subscribers a few hours ago. In fact I gained roughly 25 subscribers today which feels pretty surreal even though it's on such a small scale.

[@lewielutz4661]

100%

[@BarrySachais]

This was a concise and easily understood explanation, Marcel. Having subscribed to your channel a few days ago, I'm looking forward to more exceptionally well-done tutorials. Thanks, Marcel.

[@marcelohm123]

Thank you Barry, I appreciate it a lot! I'm super happy about the how things are starting off here on KZbin.

[@TommyBill-zt2ks]

Very Well explanation. Thanks u!

[@marcelohm123]

You are welcome!

[@kevinleague]

Excellent, thank you!

[@marcelohm123]

You are welcome!

[@marianovictor]

Marcel, Thank you for the explanation of these features!

[@marcelohm123]

You're welcome!

[@eltiburon1983]

Thanks for the explanation! But what i find even more impressive is you clean room setup for recording. The lighting of you and the background is really nice. Also i like that you are talking to us in very clean english even though i think you are german. This channel needs more attention! Keep up the good stuff! Schöne Weihnachten!

[@marcelohm123]

Thank you for your kind words! I‘m also very satisfied with the way my room looks in the videos. Currently using 4 lights for the setup. And the comment on my english skills does mean a lot as I‘m indeed german and it‘s definitely quite a bit harder to do these videos in a language that‘s not native to you. Frohe Weihnachten to you too!

[@MrDaveB123]

Cool. Great info. You have gained a sub. Thanks

[@marcelohm123]

Thank you buddy! I appreciate it a lot.

[@JohnWilliams-zl1oe]

Brilliant explanation

[@marcelohm123]

Thank you John

[@ahankiransullia3301]

Kiran from india.....I had this question ..so you explained very very good...thank you Boss..by the way am your subscriber

[@marcelohm123]

Thank your for your feedback and also thanks for subscribing!

[@mylesgarado212]

my god thank you for this video, all this time i was doing the hard way i had to convert my raw files to TIFF files which are freakin large then import to lightroom just to see that i got the same results from my camera

[@marcelohm123]

That does indeed sound like a very time and disk space consuming solution.

[@arsalansphotography5758]

Love the content. Hope to see you crossing 100k soon. ❤️ Love from Pakistan ❤

[@marcelohm123]

Thank you so much man! I appreciate it. Love from Germany.

[@trondhelgehie6771]

It’s yet a reason i am using Capture One as an RAW converter, and exporting the pictures as a Tiff file to LR ore PS

[@marcelohm123]

When I was shooting a lot more Portraits a few years ago I was also mainly working in C1 because I liked the RAW Conversion more, especially when it comes to skin tones and I liked some of the c1 tools better for editing contrast in faces.

[@thenovruzlu]

Thanks for all bro. but i have 1 question. how to fix lightroom not change it auto.all the ways it change for fx3 RAW s

[@marcelohm123]

Sorry for the late reply. Could you further explain your problem? I don't exactly understand your question.

[@truebro77]

ok, great, but how can I get the import to look even slightly close to the image I am getting on the back of my LCD screen as that would limit how much editing I need to actually do

[@marcelohm123]

If you want your final image to look close to what you were seeing on the back of your camera I would suggest just shooting JPGs instead of RAW. With modern cameras RAW is really only need if you want to do a lot of editing or if you're shooting in very conditions with very harsh contrast. Most cameras produce very decent JPGs that can handle a fair amount of editing.

[@CarrieHamptonPhotography]

My main question is how to I KEEP the embedded preview in develop module (or exporting to PS)

[@marcelohm123]

Might not be the answer that you were hoping to get, but you can't. Since the embedded preview is a preview that is not generated by Lightroom but by your camera, Lightroom does not have any access to what "formula" your camera uses to get from the RAW File to the way the embedded preview looks. So as long as you're working with RAW Files you'll have to deal with what your RAW-Converter of choice will do to the image.

[@JoshSher_]

Thanks for the video! There's still something that is a bit unclear to me(maybe i missed something): The import doesn't lose any data of the RAW files, right? Since it's only an interpretation and the actual data is still accessible, it shouldn't matter if the preview is high contrast or low contrast, you can always get all the data out of the file right? I'm asking, because I had a discussion with a friend recently, about why an imported RAW file looks different in Lightroom than in Capture one. And some photographers apparently argue that Capture One offers more details / dynamic range and so on. But this doesn't make sense to me, since they both work off of the RAW file, there can't be any loss off data until you hit export. So you should in theory be able to get the same results with both, if you know how to use the tools, right? (aside from them offering different workflows or getting to the same result easier. I mean just from the technical side...) Not asking for you to tell me that one is better than the other😉 just really curious about the theory of the RAW workflow...

[@marcelohm123]

Yes, you're right on that one. When it comes to image-data and things like contrast, dynamic range etc. all RAW converters access the same amount of data. At least I've never heard or read about one software being able to access data that another isn't and I would be very suprised if that ever happened. The only case where I ever noticed something like this is that capture one would actually access a slightly larger pixel count/larger image than what you were seeing on the back of the camera. Can't really remember what the deal was (I looked into it back then), but that's the only case where I ever experienced something like this and it has nothing to do with the actual visual data of the image.

[@MariaVelezVelasquez]

I have an issue where when I open the photo on the photos windows app it shows the actual dark color and on lightroom it goes so much bright that it´s terrible. For me is the opposite and not sure what´s going on cause previously everything was fine and running smoothly

[@marcelohm123]

So previously it did not get any brighter when you imported into Lightroom?

[@SteveSSzymczak]

When I’m shooting on my Canon camera, and I choose to capture RAW+JPG. When I import into Lightroom, underneath the image in library it reads RAW+CR3. My question is, am I editing the RAW file or the JPG file? The preview does not seem flat so I believe I am looking at the JPG file. It is very confusing.

[@marcelohm123]

CR3 is a file extension for Canon‘s RAW Files. It was added a while back on the newer Canon cameras. CR3 Raw files remain the same level of quality as normal raw files, but are quite a bit smaller in file size. So while RAW + CR3 might sound a little confusing I would assume that it just means you were shooting CR3 Raw Files and you should be editing the raw files. Another way to check this is to let lightroom load RAWs and JPGs of the same image as seperate files. You should be getting a raw+cr3 and a jpg file upon import then. I actually have a video on how to do this.

[@davehenson5390]

While you are editing, the bar underneath the image should show the filename of the image on screen (ie the one you are editing). If your preferences are set as 'treat raw and jpeg as one file' you will by default be editing the raw file. If you import jpeg and raw as separate files, you can choose which one to edit.

[@timroach5898]

You do realize if you use Sonys raw software Imaging Edge to convert those raws it will convert them to look like the preview? You can then save them as 16 bit TIFFs or JPGs if needed.

[@marcelohm123]

Honestly never knew this was a thing. How d0 the 16bit tiffs compare to a RAW File in terms of highlight retention and shadow detail? But this also sounds like it would add quite a lot of time to the whole workflow, just to get a slightly better starting point for editing.

[@tomdearie5165]

Thanks, Marcel. I have a quick question you might be able to answer. I’m a long time Lightroom user but haven’t kept up with the latest details re previews. As a wildlife photographer, I need to browse quickly through hundreds of high-quality previews in Library mode to pick the images that are sharpest. What’s the fastest-loading preview mode that will allow me to see the 1:1 pixel sharpness of the images of a day’s shoot? Less than 1:1 is not an option. Right now, I get the “Loading” notice every time I go from image to image and it would be a huge time saver to eliminate that. (I have 64GB of RAM on the machine, so I’ not short of RAM.) Cheers Tom

[@marcelohm123]

As far as my knowledge about previews goes your only option to actually see the 1:1 pixel sharpness/image resolution is the actual 1:1 preview option. Do you also get a loading notice if you let Lightroom take it's time to generate all the previews first?

[@tomdearie5165]

@@marcelohm123 Thanks, Marcel. Yes - I build full res previews and the loading notice always happens (if I pause on one image, it seems to preload the next one or two and I avoid it for those). My camera’s a Z8 with about 46 MP, so the pixel dimensions are fairly large. Was just hoping there was an arcane Adobe checkbox I’d missed along the way. Anyway - thanks for the input. It just means I continue my quest for faster hardware. 🙄 Cheers Tom

[@marcelohm123]

@@tomdearie5165 Hm, sadly can't help you with this one. Maybe I've never encountered this problem because I rarely shoot cameras over 24MP. Regarding the hardware department it might also make sense to check which components Lightroom mainly utilises. Because I do know that the different Adobe programs are all over the place when it comes to use of RAM, CPU and GPU.

[@balbirkandola2472]

@@tomdearie5165 best get FAST RAW VIEWER

[@kc6715]

Wish you would do some videos on Adobe Bridge, also more on Adobe Camera Raw. Please!

[@jpdj2715]

The simple explanation to Bridge is that it is a plain file browser, like the one in your operating system. EXCEPT it can render all sorts of images, e.g. raw ones, in a smart way. Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) is the actual raw processor that both Photoshop (Ps) and Lightroom Classic (LrC) use as plug-in. Ps makes this visible when it traps off ACR, LrC hides it in its user interface. Everything under LrC's "Develop" tab is actually ACR. ACR raw processes your image and hands it over to LrC into its workspace (RAM) as "ProPhoto" colour space. That is much larger than your best desktop monitor/display. So LrC, in displaying that internal ACR image, will compress gradation/contrast and colour space at that, in order to have an acceptable view of your image. In the labour division between LrC (or Ps) and ACR, it is likely that ACR-binary-code actually does this or else it would not look well when run standalone. As to colour space, you'll have a hard time finding a monitor that can render 100% Adobe RGB (that is larger than RGB or sRGB), but they exist, e.g. Eizo have them. Note that your "cheap" (relative to a photographic monitor) gaming monitor likely has dynamic contrast. Modern monitors have a lot of LED backlight lamps rather than one or two fluorescent tubes. These backlight LEDs in the case of dynamic contrast have their brightness altered to make areas darker or brighter than elsewhere. This is rather coarse and may fool you in editing your images, when you think you lost detail in what ACVR calls the blacks (in colour theory there is no plural of black. Black means 0% reflectance and anything that is lighter than that, is called grey, as long as it has no colour - black grey and white are not colours.). With Bridge you can directly process your images in ACR without going into LrC or Ps first. ACR will store your/its non-destructive edits into a sidecar file that is specific to standalone-ACR. I never tried to see what happens with these sidecars when you process in ACR standalone first and import into LrC later. It would be nice if LrC imports such edit-data as a virtual copy. In Windows, ACR is a program in .dll form and this means you need another app to start it as shell to that .dll. AFAIK. Which means you could not start ACR directly from the Windows file browser. In order for ACR to raw process properly, your camera needs to be supported. In Windows, with a default installation of Adobe products, you'll find all supported cameras, potentially with firmware version variants, in the folder C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Lightroom Classic\Resources\CameraProfiles\Adobe Standard. As long as ACR/LrC are set to develop using the "Adobe Standard" profile, ACR will use your supported camera's profile from this folder (with 1,164 items today) - and process your camera's raw images towards Adobe's preferences, you might say in an attempt to make the images of all supported cameras look the same. As your camera has its own profiles to tell its in-camera raw processing how to do its job - e.g. in Nikon these profiles are called "Picture Control" and you can make your own in camera as well as at your desktop with Nikon NX Studio but also save them to card and upload them into another Nikon camera (provided compatibility) - Adobe has alternative profiles in the folder (for example in the case of a Nikon Z 9): C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Lightroom Classic\Resources\CameraProfiles\Camera\Nikon Z 9. This folder holds 11 profiles that you'll also find in the camera (by name, the binary data in the Adobe profile is different than in the Nikon Picture Control): flat, landscape, monochrome (5 variants), neutral, portrait, standard, vivid. "Adobe Standard" us rather flat and Adobe's competitor Capture One is more vivid. In the case of Nikon, if you shoot raw only, the profile you have set will be recorded into the raw file, but the raw image data never change. Also note that "raw image data" is not "sensor data". The actual sensor, the photosites therein, is analogue (and colour blind). Between the analogue photosite values and the monochrome data element in the raw file (each photosite causes one data element in the raw that has one colour, so that data element is monochrome: mono=single, chrome =colour), the camera needs to do something called analogue-to-digital (AD) conversion. This is (low-level) firmware (version) specific and the AD conversion determines e.g. how analogue values are mappen to digital integer values, so there is a gradation curve in there. ACR has to work with that and this is one of the things that the Adobe Standard profile informs ACR about.

[@marcelohm123]

Well, this was probably a more technical explanation that I could have ever given. Seems like you've got a lot of knowledge about the nitty gritty when it comes to LRC and ACR. Referring to the initial comment, I actually don't use Bridge nor Camera RAW in my workflow. I make all my image selections in Lightroom and so far have never felt the need to use another program (like bridge) simply for organising my photos. And I don't use ACR because it's basically the same as Lightroom minus the Library Module. And as I've always had access to both Lightroom and Photoshop, there was never a real use case for Camera Raw.

[@jpdj2715]

@@marcelohm123 - I work the same way like you do and for a long time have not even installed Bridge. But when I discovered what I describe, I installed it and occasionally use it. I don't spray and pray - old school former film photographer - and do not really need the library module. I do backup my catalogue after each exit from LrC, but always also use sidecars. Not "embedded", though. The way I set up my beast workstation makes I/O very fast, so sidecars are not in the way of performance as I experience it. With "storage" very cheap and very fast today, it's also easy to take a large image store with us in a small package, so the catalogue with previews loses its unique value. Going into ACR via Bridge may be handy, though, from a performance perspective, depending on how much RAM your computer has, what apps you have open, and how many displays you connected. In Windows, setting folders to (extra large) icon view can cause Windows Explorer (file browser) to hog GPU RAM a lot - using several GB from my GPU's 11GB very fast video RAM. So I set all folders to "details" with zero preview icons. As I authorised LrC and Ps to use hardware acceleration, my assumption was that nothing else would hog the GPU RAM, but that's unfortunately false. Before Windows, Microsoft had this command-line shell with operating system called MS-DOS and we used to say that this means "MaybeSome-Day and Operating System". That's windows with a good looking layer of camouflage. Maybe some day. So, you do not need to start LrC or Ps to edit a file and Bridge/ACR is relatively compact. Note that the generation of your image is related to the horizontal display resolution and this bit me in the rear end with a notebook with 16GB RAM and 4GB video RAM (discrete GPU). It could not handle LrC or Ps with two 4K displays connected - formally it was capable of having two 4K displays, but ACR/LrC did not have enough RAM. Even with 64GB RAM and 11GB video RAM, I can run into problems, e.g. when a lot of browser processes are open. Windows allocates half of RAM to Shared video RAM, so in my case, I start with 32GB shared plus 11GB dedicated video memory, leaving "only" 32GB for the apps I use. Part of the heavy load is the resolution of the camera you use. Mine is 45.4MP and a losslessly compressed image is some 45MB, but note that this is compressed raw and as each photosite has only one colour channel (of 14 bits in my case), this will be converted into 48 bits per photosite (3 channels of 16 bits) that on the monitor are rendered as 3*8 bits Anyhow, depending on what other work you are doing concurrently on your computer, and its power, running ACR from Bridge may be a solution to a problem. And let's face it, if you never keyword-label your images, potentially print from an app by your printer manufacturer, upsample your images in Gigapixel AI (by Topaz, like I do), then, going into LrC is only because of habit. This drives to another question: why Adobe. My Nikon 45.4MP files stem from a camera without OLPF and Adobe only this year improved its own noise that people attribute to cameras, but is plain failed raw processing. AI Denoise in ACR as option is fine, but it does not repair the mosaicking (generation of digital artefacts) that leads to loss of detail and weird crinkly lines. So if you do not need Ps or LrC and could stick to Bridge/ACR then you could alternatively consider DxO PhotoLab because of its excellent raw processing capabilities. Cameras without OLPF (to make raw processing easier, depend less on smart AI), in the case of Nikon, exist since Nikon released the D800E that Eliminated the OLPF of the D800 - over 10 years ago.

[@kc6715]

@@marcelohm123 A lot of that was over my head but thank you! I shoot in camera raw and I like using Bridge, ACR and then Photoshop - over Lightroom Photoshop. I simply download my camera to my computer and the photos are there. I don't have to import them into LR every time I want to work on them. Just a personal preference and I love your videos! Thanks again.

[@marcelohm123]

@@kc6715 But are the edits that you make in ACR stored anywhere, if you wanted to revisit an image? I get that bridge might be a more convenient solution when it comes to going through your photos and keeping them located in "one app". But with Lightroom you're also able to store all the edits that you made to your photos, so if you need them later on (for reference or if you wanna tweak an image slightly more) they are all there in your catalog for you, nicely organised together.