Serious color problems with Lightroom

Question

Hello,
I purchased lightroom this week and I am having a serious problem importing images. I am using a new Macbook Pro with OS Snow leopard. My camera is a Canon 1ds Mark2.
When I import files half of them have this awful deep orange cast over them.
If you look at the thumbnails some of the frames are normal and then the next few turn orange, all shot within seconds of each other in the same place, no WB change on the camera or anything. What is this, a bug in Lightroom? I dont experience this problem with Photomechanic or Photoshop.

Answer 1

It doesn't sound like you know what actually caused the problem. What happens if you 'delete' (i.e. remove from LR only) some of the previous "orange" pictures and try to reimport them into LR?
I understand that you are new to Lightroom – Welcome aboard! Your first step after learning the basic controls in LR is to adjust your 'Camera Default Settings' in the Develop module to better suit your workflow. I suspect you are using your camera with 'Auto White Balance' (AWB) set, which is inappropriate for RAW file format. Reason: If your LR Develop module white balance control is set to anything other than 'As Shot,' then pictures shot under different color temperature lighting will take on different color casts (i.e. orange, blue). The controls you have in LR (White Balance eye dropper) can help you to better determine the white balance settings for a particular shoot, and easily apply them uniformally across multiple pictures. This will provide better results than using AWB on any camera!
I use a ColorChecker Passport to create custom camera profile and white balance develop presets for 'Daylight,' 'Cloudy,' Tungsten,' etc. for each of my camera bodies. Therefore I never use 'As Shot' white balance setting, and never have this kind of problem. My default camera setting uses the ColorChecker custom 'Daylight' preset, which I can change to a different preset for any photo session that was not shot under normal daylight conditions. If you want good color control of your images, you should not rely on the 'Auto White Balance' setting on your camera (especially for JPEGs!). You don't need a ColorChecker to adjust your camera body's color temperature in LR, but it helps and also creates a full custom camera profile! I own three Canon camera bodies and they all produce slightly inacurrate white balance using LR's 'Daylight' white balance setting with high-noon sunny daylight pictures. I suggest you determine and create your own custom white balance settings in LR for daylight and then change your camera default to these settings. You can also create custom develop presets for Cloudy, Tungsten. etc., which can be applied to specific shooting sessions as a better "starting point" for white balance.
Do a little research on using Lightroom's White Balance Eyedropper tool – Here's one link:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Lightroom/3.0/Using/WS947672F1-AAB2-43de-9011-BDDECA05EC19.htm l