Raw files become dull and lifeless when imported

Question

i have an isue with the fact that i spend time setting up my camera for the rite white balance and exposure to get a quality image that might use some spot removal in post but thats about it, to have the images become dark, dull and lifeless in lightroom when imported.  when i try to bring the color back its just not the same.  why is this happening and how can i fix it.  i am glad that i saved the files elsware first, the raw images look fine in other sofware its just lightroom that is doing this. here is an screen shot of the same image side by side the one on the left is raw exactly how it lookes in camera with canon software and the one on the right is in lightroom. at first it looked the same but 2 seconds later it was dull and imo ugly.

Answer 1

You lack a basic understanding of what a Raw file is and what it isn't. It is data from the sensor siphoned off the camera's pipeline immediately after it is converted from analog to digital data, a checkerboard of the intensities of light received by red-seeing pixels, green-seeing pixels and blue-seeing pixels. A record of the intensities only (greyscale) and not the colors. All the colors will be created by the camera further down the line, on the way to a jpg. The Raw can, at best, be characterized as a b&w image, dark and flat because it is linear. The later processing will also apply a Tonal Response Curve to make it brighter, contrastier and more vivid. Since the Raw has been pulled out of the camera before it gets a chance to do all this, it has to be done by the Raw converter - Lightroom in this case. But the camera needs to display on its LCD a review of the shot, so it does do the rest of what is needed to produce a bright and pretty jpg, purely for display purposes,and then embeds that jpg in the Raw file. When you view the Raw on an application that is not a converter, it shows you that jpg. Open the Raw in the converter from the camera maker and it uses the same processing as the camera to produce a very similar image to that jpg, a more or less finished product. But the initial processing done by LR is more restrained and moderate because it is assumed that if you shot Raw you will want to design your own personal processing, an expression of your taste, judgement and vision. By having defaults that add only minimal processing LR is providing a starting point that leaves the road open to whatever direction you want to take it. But if you don't want to make that investment, Adobe bundles with LR a collection of presets that will move the sliders for you and there are many hundreds more on the internet, both free and purchasable.