I installed LR2 last night and experienced a problem. When trying to open a RAW file, the photo shown fr the 1st 5 seconds looks great ... but transforms into a dull/flat version when fully loaded. I went online and this appears to be normal ... irritatingly normal. The explanation seems to be that the photo shown in the first 5 seconds is the jpg file that Nikon cams produce when we take pics in RAW mode. This more vibrant jpg picture is what shows up in our cam's LCD screen. The duller/flatter image that shows up in LR a few seconds after loading it is supposedly the real RAW file. What's irritating is that I end up editing and manipulating the RAW file trying to achieve the color/contrast of the jpg file ... makes me think I should just shoot in jpg format instead :(

Is there a way/setting for LR2 to automatically manipulate the RAW file to have the look of the so-called in-cam jpg?

Any tips on LR2 use?

TIA

read this http://www.digitalphotographer.com.ph/forum/showthread.php?t=8734

short answer is, LR shows you the RAW file without any image editing/presets/settings applied, that's what a raw file really looks like.

Hehe..I had this same dilema. When I tried RAW I love the increased number of levels of adjustments and the sharpening you can do with it..but it loads up weirdly colored.:) That's why I usually shoot jpeg now.:) It is only for special occasions that I shoot in Raw..like when it is a really important picture that I want to be able to adjust freely, or there's insufficient light so I can adjust the exposure later. Most of the time I shoot in Fine Jpeg, Nikon reconstructs jpegs well saves, me a lot of time adjusting the colors to my taste (which is oversaturated.hahaha).

Learn how to do presets

hi binggy! i personally love lightroom. all you need to do to get your in-camera colors is to download the latest version of camera raw from Adobe (currently 5.3 if i'm not mistaken), with the plug-in you'll also get the Camera Profiles. install it (you should have lightroom 2). once it's installed, when you go to DEVELOP in lightroom, scroll down the options to the last part, it's where your camera profile settings is located. with camera profiles, lightroom will automatically detect the camera used for the photo and will let you choose the profiles you've used in-camera to get the (almost) same colors you get in-camera, in our case with canon, i can give it the Standard, Portrait, Landscape, etc. profiles (not familiar with nikon's anymore).

hope this helps! oh by the way, your LCD and web photos would surely pop out more than your photo in lightroom as they are smaller. :)

Hi Jon, I have Photoshop CS3and it seems ACR 5.3 isn't compatible with it. Can I download Adobe Camera Raw 5.3 (ACR) and install it into LR2?

I just downloaded and installed the LR 2.3 update that also supposedly has the camera profiles. Where exactly can I find this? In the Develop Tab, I see Basic, Tone Curve, HSL, Split Toning, Detail, Vignettes and Camera Calibration

And yes David, i'll try to learn, develop and use my own Presets :)

Check your settings in LR, there should be an option in the Develop section of your Preferences to load defaults based on camera's serial number.

LR's ACR is continually upgradeable, so as long as you're in 2.x, you can be sure that your LR's ACR can open new camera raw files, unlike in PS where ACR is tied to the PS release version and you can't upgrade ACR by itself.