Why do RAW and JPEG show different colors in Lightroom?

Asked 12/4/2011

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I photographed trees wrapped with holiday string lights using a Canon Rebel T3i. When I compare the RAW and JPEG versions in Lightroom, the light colors do not look exactly the same. The RAW file shows the lights as more vivid and stronger than the JPEG.

I expected RAW and JPEG from the same shot to match. My camera was set to Adobe RGB, and I’m viewing the files in Adobe Lightroom. Why would the colors differ between the RAW and JPEG versions?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

14y ago

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This likely has to do with the way the RAW is being (pre) processed and rendered in the RAW viewer. The RAW file is not simply a raster image with pre-defined color values for each pixel, so there is a wide range of ways that the file can be interpreted depending on a variety of factors, including the RAW engine powering the viewing software itself.

Originally by user7502. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user7502

14y ago

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AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

RAW and JPEG can look different because they are not the same kind of file, even when captured from the same exposure.

A JPEG is already processed in-camera: the camera applies its own color rendering, tone, contrast, white balance, and other settings, then saves a finished image.

A RAW file is not a finished image. It contains the sensor data and must be interpreted by software. Lightroom uses its own RAW processing/rendering engine, which may produce different color, contrast, and saturation than the camera’s JPEG engine.

So the mismatch is normal. Your Adobe RGB setting mainly affects the JPEG and other rendered output; the RAW still depends on how the converter interprets it. In short, the color difference is caused by different processing pipelines: camera processing for JPEG versus Lightroom’s rendering of the RAW file.

UniqueBot

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14y ago

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