How to Improve your Camera’s Colours in Lightroom
When Lightroom first came out, one of the biggest complaints that people had, was that the colours would change when importing RAW files. This led to the inclusion of colour profiles, designed to mimic a camera’s various picture modes, and this seems to address the problem. However, as time has gone by and Lightroom has supported more and more cameras, the quality and accuracy of the included colour profiles have started to vary significantly. If you find that, even with selecting a colour profile that matches what you shot in camera, the colours are still quite a bit off, then this trick may help you resolve the problem.
I’ve begun to notice this more and more lately. It’s been a problem on Sony cameras for a while, but when trying out RAW files from my new Canon G7X Mark II, I noticed that the colours were way off on this. Fuji shooters are probably ok because the colour profiles for the picture simulation modes seem to be relatively accurate, but if you shoot other cameras, and have noticed a significant difference, then you’re not alone. I guess Adobe can’t keep up with the sheer number of cameras and is cutting corners.
Anyway, to solve the problem, it’s a matter of tweaking the calibration. In this video, I show you how to do that, which in and of itself isn’t that hard, but I also show you how to use an in-camera Jpeg as a reference, using the develop module’s reference photo option. When you’re finished, you just save the results as a preset, and then either apply it on import or alternatively set the camera defaults.
I hope you find this useful, and I think it’s something everyone should know. I’ve been reading a lot of commentary recently about people complaining about different cameras “Colours” and I can’t help but wonder if a lot of the criticism is actually because of Lightroom’s crappy calibration. There are much more scientific ways of doing this too, such as using a colour checker and creating your own custom profile, but that’s probably a bit complicated for the average photographer, so this way is a simple and easy visual way, to get it in the ballpark.
Have you noticed any issues with your camera’s colour calibration in Lightroom? Let us know in the comments below.
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