# Best to use Lightroom to enhance color?



## adamcoe (Nov 27, 2012)

Hi there...brand new to the forum, wanted to pick your brains about a few things. I have a Canon 60D that I bought about a year ago, and I've been using Lightroom 4 for maybe half that time. Total eye-opener (had been using Photoshop but I found Lightroom just as powerful for what I do and much more streamlined). Anyway just wondering how some of you go about dealing with color...I have the 60D set up to shoot totally neutral; that is, no color enhancement onboard the camera at all (like "Vivid" mode and what have you), with the thinking this would leave me the most options in post production to set how vivid or whatever I wanted the shots to be. Is this a bright idea, or is Lightroom just as useful if you have some of those settings engaged? Even if I were to use them, I image I'd set them fairly conservatively...I guess what I'm asking is am I missing out on anything by shooting relatively dull shots, which I then spruce up, or is this a smart approach?

Thanks gang


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## bobrobert (Nov 27, 2012)

I guess what I'm asking is am I missing out on anything by shooting  relatively dull shots, which I then spruce up, or is this a smart  approach?


IMO definitely a smart approach. If you have the time and expertise and don't have a lot of images to process then you are on the right road.


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## adamcoe (Nov 27, 2012)

Yeah I've definitely gotten better over the few months of using it, seeing which areas it works best in. And I definitely have time...I play guitar on a cruise ship so most afternoons are open . Mostly I just shoot the places we visit, maybe 4 or 5 dozen shots all told each day I go out, of which I only use perhaps half, so it's not billions of images to work through. Thanks for the advice!


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## Jim Wilde (Nov 27, 2012)

Hi, welcome to the forum.

You didn't specify if you are shooting Raw or Jpeg (or maybe both)....there's a lot of difference! If shooting Raw, understand that most of the camera settings will be ignored by Lightroom during its raw conversion, so by and large it won't matter if you have the camera's Picture Style set to Neutral, Portrait, Landscape or whatever. These only come into play if you shoot jpeg, although they will also be applied for the embedded jpeg preview which is included in the raw files.

There are a couple of settings which DO influence the raw file, although I'm not sure if they are available on the 60D (they are on the 7D and 5D3)....these are Auto Lighting Optimisation (ALO) and Highlight Tone Priority. These can effect the actual exposure when a shot is taken (usually under-exposed to protect highlights), but as the settings aren't read by Lightroom it cannot compensate in the way that the camera (or DPP) does, resulting in an initially under-exposed file.

So I have all camera settings set to neutral, and I have ALO and HTP disabled.

If you shoot Jpeg, different story....here the camera is doing the raw conversion, so whatever camera settings you have set will come into play. Definitely worth experimenting with different camera settings to see if you can get better results from Lightroom if the camera is setup with neutral settings.


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## adamcoe (Nov 28, 2012)

Ahh, very good point, I hadn't thought of that. I'm shooting RAW, so I'll look into that ALO and HTP thing, I'm not certain what the 60D does in those cases. Thanks for the heads up!

a.c.


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## Glenn NK (Nov 30, 2012)

If one is doing production work (sports are a good example, taking a lot of shots that have to be processed fast as in "right now"), then JPEG might be the better approach (don't want to start a RAW/JPEG war).

As for RAW and in-camera settings, it matters little what is set (except as noted above:  ALO and HTP).  It's often been mentioned elsewhere that when shooting ETTR (Canon bodies but may apply to others), setting Contrast to about negative three will get the LCD jpeg to more closely match the RAW file when it is viewed in Lightroom.

IMO, the camera LCD image is not a particularly good basis on which to judge image IQ and colour.


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## Tony Jay (Nov 30, 2012)

Glenn NK said:


> If one is doing production work (sports are a good example, taking a lot of shots that have to be processed fast as in "right now"), then JPEG might be the better approach (don't want to start a RAW/JPEG war).



Glenn is absolutely correct here shooting JPEG will never be entirely redundant for precisely the reasons outlined.
Of course the way one shoots, RAW versus JPEG, is often (perhaps nearly always) different.
I certainly wouldn't get many good results shooting JPEG the way I shoot in RAW.

I do however shoot with Faithful picture style only so the camera LCD histogram more closely approximates the qualities of the RAW histogram. Combined with a bit of experience gained through use I can get a pretty good idea about potential headroom when shooting ETTR. (Ideally a lot of us would like an option to display the actual RAW histogram _in camera_.)

And yes, the camera LCD screen is never a good discriminator for anything apart from shooting your toe by mistake or the inside of your lens cap. Those captures can safely be deleted if required. Everything else - evaluate those images on a good large size monitor before making any decisions about technical or aesthetic quality.

Tony Jay


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