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I shoot raw with a Sony A7sII and I am really satisfied with the results of the image previews, until I import them into Lightroom. Lightroom shows the processing thumbnail which reflects how I perceived the image in camera, but it then immediately processes the RAW in a different way with the colors dramatically off.

I am using Lightroom 2015.3 with Camera Raw 9.3, for reference.

Lightroom has a "Camera Calibration" feature in the Develop Settings which is always set to Profile Adobe Standard by default, with the 2012 process. Some of the other profiles more so reflect what I saw in camera and the thumbnail, but after Lightroom processes a RAW for its own catalogue preview, there is no way to undo it for reference. This is very aggravating and I will probably just shoot RAW+JPG to get around it, but this makes my shooting slow down in the field and is less practical.

Is there any way get the RAW processing more reflective of what I perceived in camera for the Sony A7 files?

CQM
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  • related: http://photo.stackexchange.com/q/52536/15871 – Michael C May 15 '16 at 06:09
  • The accepted answer to this different question may also be useful to you: http://photo.stackexchange.com/q/48431/15871 – Michael C May 15 '16 at 06:10
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    I keep wondering why peoples shoot in RAW and want the JPEG output. Isn't more practical to shoot directly in JPEG? – motoDrizzt May 15 '16 at 07:20
  • @motoDrizzt with my current tools, it may be! A RAW file has greater color range than an 8bit jpg. With no filters applied the camera and the raw processor on my computer should reflect the same thing. There was no noticeable discrepancy with other camera models. – CQM May 15 '16 at 08:10
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    @CQM: the problem is that no, in any way the camera and the development tool should show the same image! The camera shows a quick jpeg preview created on the fly with some internal parameters, some explicit setups, and all the shortcuts needed to keep the processing time low: hell, on my PC-on-steroids it takes ages for each raw to be processed, while the camera generate the JPG almost immediately. The raw data is exactly that: raw. If you ask for raw data, is because you want raw data to work on. If you want preprocessed data, just use jpg. – motoDrizzt May 15 '16 at 08:27

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Get a ColorChecker Passport and use it to create accurate profiles for Lightroom for the specific camera+lens combo and the current lightning conditions.

While this doesn't guarantee that the images will look like the JPEGs generated by the camera, it does makes them look more accurate, perhaps even more pleasing than the JPEGs.

D. Jurcau
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LightRoom does no 'own processing' unless it is told to do so, maybe by import templates.

When you are importing, check which template/profile you apply during the import; and try importing without any profile/settings.

If you say 'the colors are dramatically off', it sounds like the temperature sliders was moved and the result stored in the import template. But whichever slider it is, you should be able to see that in develop mode and undo it easily by setting them back to the center.

Aganju
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