Lightroom modifying my B&W RAW files after import

[brianhillphotography]

I have a question that I can't seem to figure out the solution to, and I have tried searching on these forums, and many others.

I'm having a problem where Lightroom is converting my Black and White RAW images to color after they've been imported. I'm shooting with a Canon 5D Mark II and a Canon Rebel XT. This happens with both camera's RAW files. It'll show up in the library as B&W, but as Lightroom goes through the new images and generates the thumbnails, it converts them to color. This can be a bit of a pain if I don't remember exactly which one's were B&W and which ones weren't.

How can I stop Lightroom from doing this? If I load the images up in Canon's DPP they show up as B&W, but for some reason Lightroom discards the information to keep the image B&W. Really frustrating me.

Thanks for any help!

 

[Brad Snyder]

You can't, it's how any raw converter works. Canon's picture styles are proprietary to Canon cameras and software. The same is true for most other manufacturers, leaving out the DNG compliant makers.

You've hit on perhaps the single most FAQ concerning Lr. Try this post for more info on the whole subject.

And welcome to the forums.

 

[Kiwigeoff]

Bill, LR at this stage doesn't read/use any information from the raw files except the image data and white-balance basically.
What you see in the library window is the camera generated jpeg preview so you camera settings are naked into that preview. When LR generates its own preview as it has no camera setting info the preview is in colour.
This has been discussed and I suggest that you place a feature request using the link in the nav. bar near the top of the page.
There are some difficulties as LR will not have the same settings as your camera for the b+W.
There are ways to get around this such as stripping the camera preview from the raw and importing that as well so you can see the b+w version beside the raw. I don't bother shooting at all in b+w as I know that at any time I can just make a conversion in LR and do so using virtual copies so I can have the versions side by side.

 

[brianhillphotography]

Thanks guys. I guess I'll just have to try harder at making mental notes as to which photo's are B&W and which aren't.

 

[Ian Farlow]

I'm curious why you would set the camera to shoot in B&W when it can be done in post?

 

[Denis Pagé]

Thanks guys. I guess I'll just have to try harder at making mental notes as to which photo's are B&W and which aren't.

What you can do is to use Instant JPEG from raw from RawWorkflow.com. It is very fast and will generate JPEGs from your originals. No. Not exactly. It will in fact extract the embedded JPEGs from your originals as you saw them on the camera preview screen. Then you can refer to those JPEGs to remember which ones you wanted grayscale and discard them once work done.