I guess I must have played with some settings in ACR and now when I convert RAW files to jpg they all come out flat, dull. If I do it with Lightroom everything looks fine. Here is an example both are unedited raw coversions:
Could you help me how to set everything to default in ACR again so it produces the same results as LR and the unedited image looks like the original RAW?
Seems a bit of noise and sharpening in the ACR file - recheck the sharpening settings whether it is on "preview images only" and also perhps you need some luminence smoothing.
The colors look different but I feel that you are worrying about something which in a way does not make sense. You said that you want the unedited image to look like the original Raw - but the original Raw only looks like anything at all once it has been converted - and this is in fact editing. The default settings are only a starting point - and in fact you may find that the auto settings, especially if you are unsure what you are doing, might make a better starting point.
However, it should be possible to reset the defaults back to the original settings - in CS2 there is a drop down menu called "settings" in ACR which does this
Probably I could not explain the problem clearly: in the past I've got on the JPG's what I've seen in the ACR window. I changed some settings (I don't even remember what) and now whatever editing I do on the image once I convert it to jpg the end result looks less saturated. This makes the whole editing process impossible because it is not WYSIYG anymore. This is not the case with the lightroom conversion - I always get the same results in the jpg what I see in the LR window.
And the problem is only with the color. Sharpness and noise is not an issue here.
Peter, this sounds more like a color space issue. If you're seeing washed out colors or color shifts, check your settings in CS3. Make sure that your working space is the same as the output space of ACR or that you have the box checked to always ask when color spaces are different. It almost sounds as if you're converting your RAW image in a large color space then when it's loaded into CS3 it is assigning a smaller space.
After some more playing around I realized that every external viewers including internet explorer displays the image coming from the ACR as the first picture above but if I open it in photoshop I see something very very close to the 2nd picture.
I have no idea what is going on...
Peter Szuhai wrote:
After some more playing around I realized that every external viewers including internet explorer displays the image coming from the ACR as the first picture above but if I open it in photoshop I see something very very close to the 2nd picture.
I have no idea what is going on...
Almost all external viewers are not able to deal with color management (or workspaces like ARGB or Prophoto RGB). You need to convert from the working space (assuming maybe default ARGB in PS--and Prophoto RGB in LR) to sRGB for external viewers and web. ..
It seems like my LR saves the RAW conversions in sRGB IEC611966-2.1 and the CS3 saves the files in Adobe RGB (1988). So you guys were right it is a colorspace issue.
My external viewers (Irfanview and ACDSee) has no problem to display the sRGB colorspace but obviously the Adobe RGB is an issue. How can I change the CS3 to work in sRGB as default?
A checkbox called "Show Workflow Options" is in the bottom-left of the ACR window, and if this checkbox is cleared the several output options will be hidden.
I'm not doing prints or any serious editing and view most of the images in an external viewer so I guess I will be fine with sRGB for now. I archive my RAW files unedited anyways so if I change my mind later they will be available.
