Lightroom exporting

[Jaedon]

I have been having an issue with Lightroom that seems to be a common problem yet no one has offered an easy solution for those of us who are not super tech savvy.

When I get my images all processed and then export them they look nothing like what I am seeing on the screen when converted from RAW to JPEG. They lose colour saturation, sharpness and they all look like they have had a soft focus filter applied to them. Put side by side on my monitor after I convert and/or post them the colour difference and loss of, for lack of a better word, lighting, is so obvious that my 6 year old asked me why they look so different.

I have my export settings set to only adjust for sharpness and size. I would say that the process reduces my exposure /lighting by 1 full stop in loss and that the colours are losing about 25 - 30%.

I have the colour space set to Adobe RGB same as my camera. I am simply at a loss as to what to change to fix it. Can anyone help?




Secondly..... what format do you export images from Lightroom as (ie: jpg, .tiff, etc) when you are preparing a print job on your images?

Thanks in advance

Jae

[Photo-John]

How are you viewing them after you export them? Have you profiled your monitor?

I honestly don't trust what I see in Lightroom. I trust it enough to make global changes. But I fine-tune everything in Photoshop to make sure it's exactly how I want it.

[SmartWombat]

I don't see the same problem.
What I export as JPG looks the same in Thumbs+ as it does in Lightroom in RAW.

Lightroom seems to render in two stages.
First, it displays form the embedded preview in the .CR2 file.
That is what Canon rendered the raw image as.
Then if I zoom in a bit, it uses the standard sized preview built at import time.
That is what Lightroom rendered the raw image as.
Finally working at full size, Lightroom re-renders the whole file at full resolution.

Between the Canon preview and the Lightroom preview I see a colour difference.

One big issue is the background colour.
If I use the Lightroom "lights out" mode and have a totally black screen except for the image, it looks totally different from the default grey background, and again different form the default Thumbs+ white background, or the Photoshop white desktop.

To be sure of the images, I have to look at both against the same colour desktop.

I've put the JPEG export rendered by Thumbs+ against the CR2 original in Lightroom.
Both programs are configured to use the monitor's ICC profile.
I can't see the difference ... could be my eyesight is faulty.
I see different colours in each eye,

[Canuck935]

I haven't had any such problems either. It sounds like you may be viewing your exported images in an application that only supports sRGB color space, such as a web browser.

[drg]

One very important question??

Are you editing in another program, ADOBE Photoshop version or not as a part of your workflow while using Lightroom??

If you don't enable Color Management in P/S, it can play all sorts of tricks. It doesn't always depending upon how you work in Photoshop. There are two or three dynamic issues regarding PSD files and the .XMP (sidecar) updating that can mess up the final image. With Color Management switched ON in Photoshop an embedded profile will be passed back and forth between the two programs and eliminate the dynamic issues and changes in the file appearance.

Are you Exporting to a JPEG or using the Print Module? There are some decided difference in what can be optioned in the two different modules as to how images look. When I use the the Web and Print modules I work differently, but that's for another post!

One other twisted possibility: If your screen is profiled for sRGB to make it look good on the Web, and if it is a LCD screen, Adobe RGB is going to look bad! Many LCD screens don't have enough range to display both adequately without changing the calibration.

Let us know . . .