Saturated RAW pictures

[beritz88436219]

I just picked up the Canon 1dx Mark ii. When I first open the folder to all the pictures everything looks just fine. No difference at all between in camera and in folder but then when I open up preview the pictures gets like automatically edited... Same thing on every Adobe program I use (Camera Raw, Photoshop, Lightroom). I just don't get the pictures like I shot them.

I also use a 5Dsr and with that I don't have any problems at all.

On the left as it shows in camera and in folder (as I want the picture to be). On the right how PS, LR, CR shows the same file...

Thanks for any help

[Trevor.Dennis]

This is a job for Dag Man!!!

D Fosse​

When you say Open up the preview, do you mean Camera RAW, or the Bridge preview?

Can you check the profile tab in ACR

And open up ACR Preferences from the link at the bottom of the page and see what colour space is set. 

Our Dag will be along shortly, and he knows about this stuff.

BTW I have a 5Ds and love it.  I used a 1Ds3 for eight years, and got fed up waiting for a high pixel count 1D replacement, but I am more than happy with the 5Ds and it is my go to camera for most things.  I also used a 1D4 which I swapped for a 1DC, and it feels really clunky compared to the 5Ds smooth and whisper quiet shutter.  I also like not carrying the weight of 1D bodies.

Good luck

[beritz88436219]

I mostly use Camera RAW but it's the same in Bridge.

And on the profile tab I have adobe standard set. If I use anything else the picture get even more saturated...

It was set to Adobe but the picture didn't change at all when I put it to sRGB...

Thanks for the reply!

[gener7]

Just throwing in my Mac experience...Dag indeed is the expert here.

What you are seeing is called "Quicklook" a feature in the Mac Finder where you press the spacebar and get the preview dialog you see on the right.

Preview is a Mac app that allows you to do minor edits to files. If you ctrl or right click on that file and choose Preview from the menu. Is it saturated there?

I'm wondering what your version of MacOS is?

[beritz88436219]

Yes, if I preview the photo like that it stays the same...

High Sierra 10.13.2

[D Fosse]

I don't see a Photoshop, ACR or Lightroom image window in either of those two screenshots -?

Other than that, it sounds like the normal and expected difference between the embedded, camera-processed jpeg on one hand, and ACR's default rendering on the other. The latter can be modified in many ways, not the least by using different camera profiles as shown by Trevor. But you're not supposed to get a full match to the camera jpeg.

[beritz88436219]

I know. It was just the easiest way to show you the difference between how I want it and shot it and how all the programs shows it...

Tried that one and it didn't solve my problem.

Hmm I don't shoot jpegs but do you mean that the camera and the preview in the folder shows a jpeg file? And with the 5dsr it's a small difference but not nearly as the photos with my 1dx..

Thanks for the reply!

[D Fosse · Accepted solution]

beritz88436219  wrote

do you mean that the camera and the preview in the folder shows a jpeg file?

Yes. The camera processes a small jpeg (using Canon's own proprietary algorithms), and displays that on the camera LCD. But more importantly, this jpeg is also embedded in the raw file. Most viewers will show you this, not the raw file. Even Bridge will show you this jpeg preview initially, until it has had time to render its own preview.

It's an often voiced request that ACR's default settings should match the camera version better (if not completely). But in fact that's an unrealistic request. The processing pipeline is completely different, so even if you could input the same parameters - they would produce different results. They wouldn't look the same.

And even so, there's no particular reason to say Canon's interpretation is more "correct" than Adobe's interpretation. It's still just a matter of taste. There is no "original" with a raw file. If you could see it, it would just be a very dark, very compressed and flat grayscale image. The useful image emerges in the course of the processing. But with ACR, you have input on the final result.

Personally, I just expose to capture as much information as possible. I don't care how it looks on the back of the camera. The image is shaped in ACR (or in my case Lightroom).

[D Fosse]

Of course, there are camera-matching profiles for most Canons and Nikons. But it's important to be aware that these are strictly reverse-engineered for visual appearance only. They will not match perfectly under all circumstances. What I wrote above still applies.

[beritz88436219]

Thanks!

I have now tried many different settings and come up to that It doesn't matter what picture style you use in the camera it will always be the same when you open up the raw file in Camera raw e.t.c.

So the picture style set in camera only affects jpeg and jpeg previews?

[D Fosse]

That's right. All camera settings except white balance are ignored by ACR.

Edit - and for the same reason: they can't be directly applied in the ACR processing engine. The only way would be to reverse-engineer to produce a roughly similar look. That would just be an unnecessary and redundant kludge IMO, especially since there already are plenty of tools in ACR to produce any look.