Why Are The Previews Different From The LCD

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 2. February 2010 - 0:00

Why are the previews in Lightroom so different from the previews I saw on the LCD of my camera, from Photo Mechanic or from InfranView is the most often asked question to new users of the Lightroom

First some technical background: In the camera you only shoot in RAW. No JPEG or whatever. All cameras only shoot in RAW, including all the point and shoot camreas. Period! The RAW photo is then always converted to a JPEG photo. All photos then get converted to a JPEG. Depending on your settings, your camera will keep the RAW photo or throw it away. If you've decided to keep the RAW format, the JPEG portion will be compressed, a lot, and will be embedded in the RAW photo. What you see on the LCD of your camera is that JPEG. All RAW photo contains 3 sections:

  1. The JPEG image
  2. The proprietary data from the camera manufacturer that indicates the image processor, you to treat the raw portion and the EXIF...
  3. The TIFF image. All RAW formats, that I know of, are variations of the TIFF, including Nikon's NEFs and Canon's CR2s.

Photo viewers, like InfranView and Photo Mechanic, open the RAW photo, look for the JPEG and display that JPEG portion of the photo.

Lightroom opens the photo, RAW or JPEG, and processes it according to its settings then displays that preview. Lightroom does not display the original JPEG. It's settings are the presets, the white balance and the camera settings. So the Lightroom preview is much closer to what you will end up either as a print or a final display, but it's very different from the JPEG preview of the LCD on the camera.

PS: This also affect the histogram displayed on the camera vs. the histogram displayed by Lightroom.