Canon 5D Mark 3 raw files look very dark and over saturated on Mac OS X

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Canon 5D Mark 3 raw files look very dark and over saturated on Mac OS X

Hello all,

I am having a bit of trouble with the RAW files coming out of my 5D Mark 3. They appear darker and overly saturated than the picture profile I am using to shoot them with. The only exception in Adobe Lightroom which after importing them will look correctly for only a second or two until it too will switch the color around a bit. I have attached a couple of screenshots which show this phenomenon. Does anyone have any clues as to why this is occurring? I do not have any highlight settings enabled and I have seen that this has caused some problems for people on these boards. I am also sure that Lightroom is not applying presets upon import. This is occurring with all applications on my system, including Preview, Photoshop, iPhoto, and Lightroom.

All help greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance,

~Omar

MacBook Pro (17-inch Mid 2010), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Jan 20, 2013 10:13 AM

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Answer 1

Omar N Author

Level 1

10 points

Jan 20, 2013 2:49 PM in response to Omar N

I found my answer in another forum. Just incase anyone comes accross this thread in the future, here was the solution posted by someone other than myself:

You should take some time to study the Raw format!

What happens here is that the image you see in your camera LCD is actually a jpeg created by your in-camera settings. But that doesn't reflect your Raw data, which has not been modified by those settings.

So, apps like Lightroom, Camera Raw, etc, don't "recognize" those settings when processing the Raw data. When you open your folder for the first time, Lightroom will quickly "view" the jpeg, but will immediately go to work rendering a "preview" using the Raw data and its own "defaults" (or presets that you prepare) so, yes, it will look significantly different from the jpeg created using your camera settings.

The only app that will actually use those settings and give you a preview that matches that jpeg is the Canon Raw processor Digital Photo Professional (DPP). So, if you want those settings as your "starting point", install and use DPP. It has some nice features, but know that Raw processors don't "share" Raw processing with each other, so you can't edit Raw files in DPP and have those edits show up with the Raw files in say Lightroom (and vice-versa). You would have to convert to a jpeg or tiff to have the edits show up in the other app.

If you want to delve into the world of Raw and Raw processing, I'd recommend the great book by Jeff Schewe "The Digital Negative":

http://www.amazon.com/The-Digital-Ne.../dp/0321839579

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