# Raw files imported into Lightroom coming out distorted and super saturated, HELP!



## Gibbler (May 20, 2015)

Hey all, I'm having a huge issue with imported RAW (CR2 from Canon)  photos in Lightroom looking super distorted and messed up. These are for an important client, and I can't find  anything on Google, and honestly I don't know what to search for. The  preview looks fine, but as soon as it's imported it looks like this:

Some info:
Camera is a Canon 6D
Card is a Sandisk 64GB 40mb/s card.


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## HamsterDR (May 20, 2015)

I would try opening the files in the Canon Raw viewer program (that they give you with the cameras), or get a (free) evaluation copy of Fast Raw Viewer (http://www.fastrawviewer.com) and see if they can open the cr2 files. If they show the same distortions, then the raw files may be corrupted.  If they open fine, then I would double check your LR installation and import process.

David


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## Gibbler (May 20, 2015)

HamsterDR said:


> I would try opening the files in the Canon Raw viewer program (that they give you with the cameras), or get a (free) evaluation copy of Fast Raw Viewer (http://www.fastrawviewer.com) and see if they can open the cr2 files. If they show the same distortions, then the raw files may be corrupted.  If they open fine, then I would double check your LR installation and import process.
> 
> David



Thanks for the quick response! I tried Fast Raw Viewer demo and they opened just fine, no problems. What settings could I have to change in LR? I have on iMac on default settings and a Macbook Pro as well.


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## HamsterDR (May 20, 2015)

I am current running LR6 (on OS X 10.10.3) and have not had any problems with the import process (I had no problems with V5 either) so it is hard to tell you what settings need to be changed.  My suggestion would be to go into preferences and reset everything to defaults in case something has been set incorrectly. You could also try setting up a new Catalog in case your existing catalog has become corrupted (make sure you have a backup of the existing catalog - Time Machine or a separate copy will work).  One thing to check would be what kind of previews you have set to be generated.  You could try different settings there with one or two photos so you could see fast results.  If you are in fact running LR5.3 you need to update the software - use the Help Updates menu to get the undated V5 software.  That would be the first thing to try.

David


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## Jim Wilde (May 20, 2015)

Whoa, slow down guys! Don't start changing any settings just yet. That looks like the typical corruption which can occasionally occur through a hardware problem, most often in the chain from camera through to Lightroom. Identification of the problem cause is usually a case of trying to swap out some of the items in that chain. So let's examine that chain first. 

Do you import via a direct camera attachment, or do you use a card reader? 

What version of the file did you open with FastRawViewer? The version of the memory card, or the copy on the hard drive?

I don't know, but does FastRawViewer do a full Raw conversion, or is it simply showing the embedded Jpeg preview?


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## Nogo (May 21, 2015)

First thing I noticed was in your profile it says you are using Lightroom 5.3 and this is your first and second post.  Many of us don't update the version we use in our profiles when we update them, so this may be a non issue, but, if you have just installed Lightroom and have not updated all the files yet, you may have an old camera raw program that doesn't properly support your camera.

I hate to suggest something so basic, but if that is the problem and your camera raw needs updating, that is a very simple fix.  Just click on "Help" in the top menu and then "Check for Updates."


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## HamsterDR (May 21, 2015)

FRV does do a conversion and is not just showing the embedded jpg.  The OP noted that the original preview image was OK, and I assume that was the embedded jpg that was showing up.  It was the import/conversion that was failing.

The comment about the possible hardware issues was interesting.  However, I assumed that since the OP said that FRV showed the raw image without distortion, that ruled out any hardware or image corruption issues.  

I do think OP needs to update LR to the latest V5 version.

David


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## Jim Wilde (May 21, 2015)

Sure, going to the latest update is always a good idea, I was just trying to stop changing settings as this problem is almost always a hardware problem. Which is why I wanted to know exactly what version of the file was being opened in FRV.

Another question: the screenshot showing the corruption, was that taken in the Library or Develop module? Is the same corruption seen in both modules? 

Another thing it could possibly be is a corrupted monitor profile, but first let's try to understand what's going on and get the answers to the questions that I've asked.


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## HamsterDR (May 22, 2015)

OP has not posted back, so we don't know if the problem has been solved.  

David


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## Bob Stuart (Feb 1, 2017)

Hi all, 

We (Bob photo enthusiast and his tech-savvy son, Greg) have been having a very similar issue to this for quite some time and wanted to chime in with our thoughts and frustrations. Like the original poster, we have had no idea what search terms to use in order to find people with similar problems: corrupted is the wrong word because the files are still readable; distorted can refer to the fisheye, pincushion, rotating, or skewing effect that some have experienced; saturated definitely describes the colours, but it's almost like a rainbow of mixed up colour information is what's happening, so we are also curious how one googles for that. Our problem has been intermittent and only semi-repeatable in some cases, as shown here... 





Note the difference in the histogram between the JPEG and NEF versions of this photo...


 


 

As of right now...

Lightroom 4 was purchased in late 2012 and the problem has been occurring throughout.
We are using Lightroom 4.4.1 on a late 2009 2.5 GHz Core 2 Duo Mac mini running OS X 10.11.6 (El Capitan).
The camera is a Nikon D7100 with its firmware updated to the latest version (1.03). 
According to this, the Nikon D7100 NEF (Nikon Electronic Format) files are read by Camera Raw 7.4, the version bundled with Lightroom 4.4: Cameras supported by Camera Raw
A trial version of Lightroom 5 did not solve the problem, so an updated Camera Raw version does not seem to be the solution. 
The Adobe DNG (Digital Negative) Converter has been updated to the latest version (9.8.0.692)
Photos are typically imported using a USB card reader using Lightroom's import feature and the copy/copy as DNG options. 
JPEGs have never caused any issue, and neither have NEFs converted to DNGs via Lightroom. 
Photos imported to Lightroom as NEFs without being converted would import fine, then show a rainbow-like skewing of the colour channels when the histogram was generated and displayed in the top-right corner of the Library module. 
Our workaround involved never importing the photos to Lightroom in Nikon's raw format (NEF) and keeping everything in DNG or JPEG format. 
Up until the other day, it would always be a range of photos, either during generation of the Lightroom histogram or when a Finder preview is generated (Command-I) in Mac OS.  
The toggle to embed the original raw file in both Lightroom and the DNG Converter has been tried both on and off with no difference. 
We were happily moving forward using the converted DNGs, until a subset of a batch of 40 DNGs showed the same issue as NEFs the other day. Unlike before, it was only some (roughly half, but not every other) of the 40 that were affected and not every photo in the range. The following images illustrate the situation. The top row is the successfully imported images (still trying to figure out how this worked versus the other two attempts), the second the first attempt with DNG Converter 8.7.1 (I think), and the third another attempt after updating to DNG Converter 9.8.0. The same images went wonky in all attempts, while the others were safe throughout... 


 

After taking the camera back to Nikon for a cleaning, Nikon has strongly encouraged (to put it kindly) the use of its proprietary Capture NX-D software and was not willing to engage us troubleshooting issues with another company's software. 
See thread below for a previous troubleshooting attempt with a fellow at Kelby Media Group. 
After reading the above suggestions, my feeling is the issue is in the hardware chain somewhere. 
We will be troubleshooting using different card readers, USB ports, computers, and conversion software in an attempt to figure out where this problem occurs, but any feedback and suggestions would be much appreciated! 

Bob & Greg 

========== ========== ========== ========== ========== 
Begin forwarded message:
*Date: *December 22, 2014 at 12:14:07 PM EST
*From: *Rob Sylvan 
*To: *Robert Stuart 
*Subject: Re: Help Desk Question*

Hi Bob,

That's some great troubleshooting. I've never encountered anyone with your exact set of symptoms. In my experience, data corruption is a sign of hardware failing (memory card, USB port, USB cable, hard drive, etc.) and I've never encountered any instance where it was caused by Lightroom.

Since you are able to successfully convert those raw photos to DNG, and import those DNG into Lightroom without problem it suggests the image data is fine, and something else is causing Lightroom to choke. Not sure what that could be though.

I do think it would be worth the time to install the 30 day trial of Lightroom 5 (use 5.7 which is the latest update), and see how that goes.
Adobe - Lightroom : For Macintosh : Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.7

Kind regards,
Rob Sylvan
Help Desk @ KelbyOne
************************************************************************

Original message text from 12/21/14, 9:35 PM:

Hi Rob,

One of my sons has been able to sit down and do some troubleshooting regarding the file corruption issue I’ve been having with NEF/raw photos using my Nikon D7100 imported into Lightroom 4.

- We originally purchased Lightroom 4.4 in November 2012.
- I switched my Nikon D100 for a D7100 a year later in November 2013. (The D7100 is the latest in the series, a 24.1 megapixel digital single-lens reflex camera model announced by Nikon in February 2013.)
- Nikon’s ViewNX 2 software has been installed but never used.
- The current computer is a Mac mini (Macmini3,1/Late 2009/2.53 GHz Core2Duo/8 GB RAM/1067 MHz bus/1 TB HD (with >50% free)), initially running OS X Mavericks.
- We believe the issue with NEFs (Nikon’s raw format extension) in Lightroom was noticed when the D7100 was first purchased, but avoided by shooting in JPEG instead.
- During a family trip from 10-13 October, I talked with my second son, and he suggested taking all photos exclusively in raw instead of JPEG, so photos from this point onward are subject to the corruption issue we’ve been having.
- I took a trip to South America from 15-30 October, during which time my first son installed Mac OS X Yosemite (10.10) over Mavericks, and we are now on the latest release (10.10.1).
- Lightroom was upgraded to 4.4.1 and the DNG Converter upgraded to 8.7 on 24 November (from Product updates).
- Adobe says the D7100’s raw files are supported as of Lightroom 4.4 and Camera Raw 7.4 (Cameras supported by Camera Raw)
- The Camera Raw version listed in Lightroom is still 7.4, and no standalone updates to Camera Raw past version 7.1 can be found on Adobe’s site.
- The D7100’s firmware was updated from 1.01 to 1.02 on 26 November.
- The DNG converter was updated to 8.7.1 on 21 December.
- Recent App Store updates show Apple’s Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 6.01 was installed on 13 December and 6.02 on 18 December.
- No further updates from Apple are available.
- Please see the attached images for examples of the situation I’m dealing with where NEF files are corrupting shortly after import into Lightroom.
- You can see examples of the corrupt photos. Notice the histogram on an uncorrupted photo is similar between NEF and JPEG version, but wildly different on the corrupted version.
- The issue seems to be triggered by Lightroom generating the histogram for an image post-import. Photos may appear to import fine, but then as Lightroom processes them post-import (hard disk activity is heard), the visual corruption occurs.
- A suggestion online suggested purging the Lightroom > Preferences > File Handling > Camera Raw Cache Settings > Purge Cache option may help. It does not.
- Some photos corrupt, some do not, but those that do are always in a series, not staggered amongst a group of photos.
- The issue is most prevalent starting with a series of raw photos taken between 13 and 22 October, though it is not exclusive to raw format photos taken in this time period (photos taken in both JPEG and raw from July, for example, showed corruption in the raw version).
- We tried to see if there was anything common to the corrupted photos vs uncorrupted (ISO, exposure/f stop, orientation, focal length, etc.), and cannot find anything other than file format and camera used.
- All photos have been copied to the hard drive manually in Finder and show no sign of corruption in Preview or the OS-generated thumbnails or Get Info panes. Before Lightroom has its way with the photos, all seems well.
- Photos showing corruption have been moved to a separate folder using Lightroom (where they then also show corruption in Finder and the Get Info pane), removed from Lightroom, deleted from the disk, then re-imported into Lightroom from the copy on the hard drive mentioned above. This appears to solve the issue to a degree, though there are some photos that show corruption. Some of the updates that have been applied may or may not have had an impact on the number of photos that corrupt after being reimported. There seems to be a fewer number of corrupted photos now as compared to when we first tried, but we’re at a point where the same subset of photos is still corrupting every time.
- Deleting photos from Lightroom (and disk) before reimporting now has no effect. The same photos always corrupt again and again.
- We are trying to figure out if a specific memory card is at fault, and so far the issue is limited to photos copied from a specific one (though this cannot be guaranteed with cards that have been cleared and reused), though all images were copied to the hard drive first and show no corruption was seen prior to import.

I have four SanDisk 32 GB memory cards: 2x Extreme 80 MB/s; 1x Extreme 45 MB/s; 1x Ultra 30 MB/s. We wondered if all of the corrupted pictures 
pictures came from the same memory card, so we kept track of which memory card contained which pictures. It looked as though all of them came from one, but a recent batch of photos from another also corrupted. 

It is the two slower cards that have had issues thus far, but again, the issue is only apparent between copying and importing — all images look fine before Lightroom touches them.

- Troubleshooting with with the images that continue to corrupt, we’ve determined:
Files imported directly from the memory card into Lightroom in raw format, corrupt.
Files first copied to the hard drive before importing to Lightroom in raw format, corrupt.
Files first converted from raw to JPEG using Preview before being imported to Lightroom are fine.
Files first converted from raw to DNG using Adobe Digital Negative Converter before being imported to Lightroom are fine.

Have you encountered this problem before? Is there any way for me to import my raw photos directly from my memory cards using Lightroom, or will I have to pre-convert them to another format? I’m tempted to purchase version 5.x of Lightroom, but have no idea if this would solve anything.

Help!

Bob
========== ========== ========== ========== ==========


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## Bob Stuart (Feb 1, 2017)

UPDATE:
Using exiftool to pull the metadata from the three versions of DSC_1169.dng shown above (0 = unaffected, 1 and 2 = affected), there was a difference in the file size and focal plane resolution & unit columns. Would this be indicative of anything? Though these numbers do seem to work still (2558.6 dots/centimetre = 255.86 dots/millimetre), the more than doubling of the file size is interesting.

FileName    FileSize FocalPlaneResolutionUnit FocalPlaneXResolution FocalPlaneYResolution
 0 DSC_1169.dng 26 MB  cm  2558.641205  2558.641205 
 1 DSC_1169.dng 56 MB  mm  255.8641357  255.8641357 
 2 DSC_1169.dng 56 MB  mm  255.8641357  255.8641357


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## Bob Stuart (Feb 1, 2017)

MORE UPDATES: 
Just did test of six different copies of this file and here are the results using the same Optex SD reader on the same USB port. 

1. NEF copied via OS from SD card to HD: OK. 
2. NEF copied via OS from SD card to HD and imported to Lightroom as NEF: OK.  
3. NEF copied to Lightroom as NEF from SD card: BAD!  
4. NEF copied via OS from SD card to HD, pre-converted via DNG Converter, and copied to Lightroom: OK.  
5. NEF copied via OS from SD card to HD and copied as DNG to Lightroom: OK.  
6. NEF left on SD card and copied as DNG to Lightroom: OK.  

Did a benchmark of the SD card via the Optex reader that showed read rates maxing out at 18.6 MB/s. Will continue to do some tests to see if this is a "read speed of the card reader not being able to keep up with the Lightroom import module" thing.


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## Bob Stuart (Feb 1, 2017)

Did a test with my Sony Reader PRS-650 as the SD reader, a much slower device at around 6.5 MB/s max, and the pictures seem fine! Very interesting! 

Will get my hands on some other card readers and see if I can solve my original problem using them.


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## clee01l (Feb 1, 2017)

Welcome to the forum.  
Lightroom is very good at detecting Hardware issues.   Beginning with the camera. I think you ruled out a fault with the camera.  

How about a different SD card?  The card itself could be bad.  What happens with a new SD card?
 Though not recommended, you can used the Camera as a Card reader/removable drive.  Have you tried this?  You need a fresh fully charged camera battery as the camera may not have enough power if the battery is old and not fully charge at the beginning go the transfer.
The best results work with a dedicated SD card reader either built in or connected vis USB.   Try different card readers to import directly into LR.  
If the Card reader (or camera) is connected by a USB cable, the cable itself could have broken wiring inside  If you use a USB Cable in the import, try different cables to see if the hardware error is limited to the USB cable. 
The last area to inspect involves the RAM and the destination Hard Drive.  Memory goes bad over time and running MemTest could be helpful in determining if your DRAM is failing.   Similarly there are disk tests that can verify the integrity of the disk drive ( I recommend DriveDX)


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## Bob Stuart (Feb 1, 2017)

Thank you, Cletus. These are some great suggestions. I suspect the card reader is the issue (it's a small cable-free USB unit). Looking back at the head-banging I've been doing over the years leads me to believe the reader is the only common element. We keep finding a way that it works and going with that until an import setting gets changed or some other glitch happens that makes me want to tinker again and figure it out once and for all.

The camera is in for cleaning at the moment, and we kept misplacing the silly mini-B 8-pin USB cable that the D7100 uses, but we will attempt using it as the reader when it's back from the shop. I have another reader I wanted to swap in, but it's been misplaced somewhere between the idea and putting it to use. I have one more at my place, which I bring for my dad to try.

The SD card is not the issue. In an effort to solve the problem before actually deleting any important originals, there's an assortment of SD cards in play. We cannot trace the issue to a particular one.

A few of my dad's photo friends tried to import his photos, presumably with a different card reader, and none of them were able to repeat the issue, so whatever is wrong is unique to the household (computer, card reader, memory, etc.). I *think* I was able to repeat it on another computer during my 2014 troubleshooting, but I cannot recall which card reader was used.

The hard drive and RAM have been upgraded around the same time that the D7100/Lightroom was purchased to make photo manipulation possible, so both were brand new 3 or 4ish years back. I will run these memory and drive tests regardless just to be safe.

Thanks again!

Greg


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## clee01l (Feb 1, 2017)

Keep us posted with your testing.  The important thing is to be methodical and change out one item at a time until you isolate the bad factor.


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## Bob Stuart (Feb 3, 2017)

The good news is I made a bootable USB Memtest86 disk and ran the default 7.5-hour, 12-algorithm, 4-pass test of the system memory. The bad (good?) news is there were no memory errors found and that's not the problem! Will keep trying after I find some additional card readers to use.


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## DFDouglas (Apr 2, 2017)

i've had the same problem several times, but not every time I load raw files to lightroom.  Sometimes all worked fine by deleting and re-importing a second time but not today.  Changed card reader out and all seems to work with no issues.


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