Preserving in-camera adjustments when importing

[ibukisteve04]

Lightroom Version Number

14.4

Operating System

1. macOS 15 Sequoia

I’ve only recently returned to photography after having dropped off about a decade ago when my old D200 gave up the ghost. I’ve been tinkering with Lightroom Classic, and with in-camera adjustments, now that I have recently picked up a D780. Yesterday I was shooting using the Vivid picture control and everything was looking great on the camera screen. I imported them and in the Library module they look fine until I move into Develop and it seems like the boosted saturation and vibrancy which was showing on the camera screen and the internal preview just drops away and the images are flat. Going back to the Library module after opening something in Develop, and the preview has changed to the flat, in adjusted version. I was wondering if there is a way to preserve the in-camera adjustments?

 

[John R Ellis]

It sounds like you're importing raws and not JPEGs. When you first imported the raw, LR used the camera-generated JPEG preview embedded in the raw (what you saw on the camera screen). But then it rendered its own preview from the raw, ignoring the Vivid picture control -- that's what you then saw in Develop and when you returned to Library.

You can tell LR to render the raw using its approximation to the Vivid picture control by changing the Profile in the Develop Basic panel from Adobe Color to Camera Vivid:

You can change the default for that camera or all cameras to use camera-matching profiles that approximate the camera's renderings (including picture controls) -- go to Preferences > Presets > Raw Defaults.

This is explained in more detail in The Missing FAQ, which I highly recommend, given you've been away from LR for quite a while.

 

[ibukisteve04]

Thank you for the advice. I think I had got it into my head that the in-camera adjustments got baked into the RAW and carried across on import. I am trying to get as much as I can right in-camera, but shoot RAW as storage isn’t really a problem, and it gives me so much latitude - plus, I’m bracketing everything while I get used to how my camera performs in different conditions so I’ve got plenty of scope for editing. By the sounds of it, I’m probably best not worrying about in-camera options like the Vivid I was shooting the other day and put my efforts into composition and exposure while shooting and leave the stylistic choices until I am editing.

Thank you also for signposting that article. Super helpful. You’re right that it’s been a long time since I was last regularly editing. In fact I’m totally fresh to LR as I used to use Apple’s Aperture.

 

[iwaddo]

Thank you for the advice. I think I had got it into my head that the in-camera adjustments got baked into the RAW and carried across on import. I am trying to get as much as I can right in-camera, but shoot RAW as storage isn’t really a problem, and it gives me so much latitude - plus, I’m bracketing everything while I get used to how my camera performs in different conditions so I’ve got plenty of scope for editing. By the sounds of it, I’m probably best not worrying about in-camera options like the Vivid I was shooting the other day and put my efforts into composition and exposure while shooting and leave the stylistic choices until I am editing.

Thank you also for signposting that article. Super helpful. You’re right that it’s been a long time since I was last regularly editing. In fact I’m totally fresh to LR as I used to use Apple’s Aperture.

If you use the histogram on you camera to adjust the exposure then the stylistic choice can affect the RAW file. For this reason I’ve set my camera picture mode to ‘muted’ as it seems to give me the best RAW file, especially for scenes, landscapes, with a high dynamic range.

 

[Zenon]

Thank you for the advice. I think I had got it into my head that the in-camera adjustments got baked into the RAW and carried across on import. I am trying to get as much as I can right in-camera, but shoot RAW as storage isn’t really a problem, and it gives me so much latitude - plus, I’m bracketing everything while I get used to how my camera performs in different conditions so I’ve got plenty of scope for editing. By the sounds of it, I’m probably best not worrying about in-camera options like the Vivid I was shooting the other day and put my efforts into composition and exposure while shooting and leave the stylistic choices until I am editing.

Thank you also for signposting that article. Super helpful. You’re right that it’s been a long time since I was last regularly editing. In fact I’m totally fresh to LR as I used to use Apple’s Aperture.

I don't think anything is baked into a RAW file. It does not even have any colour space because it is just data. In camera settings are obviously recognized by the companies proprietary software but that is from the metadata. So it depends on the app you use but I doubt any can use the actual colour, just emulations.

 

[Zenon]

If you use the histogram on you camera to adjust the exposure then the stylistic choice can affect the RAW file. For this reason I’ve set my camera picture mode to ‘muted’ as it seems to give me the best RAW file, especially for scenes, landscapes, with a high dynamic range.

I've set up my Canon with some in camera processing items. Camera Standard Color as one example. LrC won't recognize it but I use Canon's proprietary software - Digital Photo Professional (DPP) to pre-cull files before importing into LrC. Quick Check - Full Screen shows the RAW files as finished Jpegs with camera settings and the sizing for screen algorithm is excellent. Files look good for initial culling in LrC but are much better with DPP. The only thing that LrC recognizes from DPP culling is star rating. I'm not sure if there are other things but I doubt it, I don't rate there as I do all of that using LrC. As a hobby shooter I have the time.

At one time I used Adobe Neutral with Auto because it didn't clip as much as the some of the other punchy emulations. Adobe profiles like Adobe Color as well. Now I use Adaptive Color AI because there is more depth to the files and highlights/shadows are better preserved. Less mucking around to put a little life back into the files.

 

[Califdan]

Many (but not all) in-camera settings such as pricture profile (e.g. Vivid) are instructions used when cionverting the RAW data to pixels. The JPG you see on the back of the camera or on JPG's on your memory card have used Canon developed code to apply those settings. In yor example for "vivid", some Canon person created code tha applied some extra saturation to the converted image and that code is built into the camera. If you shoot RAW, there is a data field showing that when shot the camera was set to Vivid but no changes are made to the image itself. When the RAW image is brought into Lightroom, some code written by Adobe is used to convert the RAW data to pixels. Exactly how it does so is controlled by what profile you've selected. So, if you select "Camera Vivid" you are using an Adobe program to add that extra saturation where the Adobe developer tried to mimic what the Canon program did in camera.

This allows you to change your mind later. With the in camera profiles, those changes get baked into the JPG pixels. With RAW no matter what your camera setting was, you can pick a different profile in LrC and totally ignore what setting was in place in the camera. That's one of the great advantages of shooting in RAW.

However, some camera settings are not "post proessing" and what you set in the camera does impact the RAW file itself. These are the ones you really need to try and get right in the camera. The main ones are Aperture (which affects Depth of Focus), Shutter Speed (which affects motion blur), lens choice or zoom level (which affects perspective), focus point, use of a CPL filter, use of a lens hood (to reduce/prevent lens flare and front element glare), and ISO (which affects noise alhough post processing noise reduction has come a long way).

 

[Conrad Chavez]

By the sounds of it, I’m probably best not worrying about in-camera options like the Vivid I was shooting the other day and put my efforts into composition and exposure while shooting and leave the stylistic choices until I am editing.

Yes, that’s how a lot of us do it, including me. When the camera is set to save as raw, the most important things to pay attention to are the settings that can’t be changed after taking the picture, which are the settings Califdan talked about in his last paragraph.

The table below might help sum up what’s been said. It shows how the appearance of a raw file is rendered differently depending on what hardware/software it passes through. This has all been true since Apple Aperture and Adobe Camera Raw pioneered raw image processing around 20 years ago, but there are more variables today as photo software companies have found more ways to give us control, such as profiles.

The point of the table is:

• If you want a raw photo to appear on your computer exactly as it did in the camera, use the camera maker’s raw editing software (for example, Nikon NX Studio) because that’s the only software with the proprietary raw processing engine and options that can produce a rendering identical to the one from the camera.
• If you edit with any software not provided by the camera maker, that software vendor engineered their own raw processing pipeline (and doesn’t have access to the proprietary raw engine used in the camera), so the default appearance of the image is based on what that software vendor thinks is best. Some applications provide profiles that try to emulate the camera maker’s look; in Adobe raw editors those are the Camera Matching profiles with names starting with the word “Camera”. So the Camera Vivid profile is the Adobe attempt to emulate the look of the Nikon in-camera Vivid picture mode as closely as it can through the Adobe raw processing engine. Compare that to Adobe Vivid profile, which creates a different rendering that Adobe thinks is the way a vivid color rendering looks best from that camera.

What’s showing the preview	Basic raw rendering	Baseline look	Refinements (e.g. sharpening, contrast)​
Camera	Camera maker’s raw engine	In-camera picture mode (e.g. Vivid)	In-camera menus
Raw editing application	Software vendor’s raw engine	Software vendor’s profile	Software vendor’s editing options
Camera maker’s application	Camera maker’s raw engine	Picture mode set in camera	Application options that match the camera

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to match the straight-out-of-camera look; lots of great film photographers throughout history were fine with the default look of their film’s standard processing and weren’t really interested in tweaking their developing or printing. The reason I’m not concerned with reproducing the in-camera look is that I want to edit to make the picture look the way I think is best, regardless of the in-camera or Adobe default looks. But if someone loves the in-camera look and wants to use Lightroom/Camera Raw then they should start with one of the Camera Matching profiles, and if that’s not close enough they should use the camera maker’s processing software.

 

[Zenon]

Not that I have any concerns but one day I'll have to check out my Canon LCD to a file using DPP.