Canon Raw problems

[Vrinda]

Hi,

I've had this problem for several months now and no one has been able to tell me what's going on.

I started using Raw late last year, and it was going beautifully. I love it. But a couple months ago I started losing most of the colour in my images. It's fine on the camera, and when I transfer it across to my computer. It's fine in preview.

And then I click to open it in Camera Raw and a huge amount of colour just fades away, especially in the red channel it seems. No matter what I do to edit it, I can never get it back like it was to begin with. It also fades in Bridge, the second I actually select a thumbnail. It's fine until then, and then the colour saps.

I've gone through the Canon forums and they suggested lots of things, monitor calibration, Bridge pre-sets etc. It's not my monitor because everything else is just great, and it's only when I click on it in Bridge or Camera Raw. I've tried resetting Bridge and Photoshop to original settings, but that hasn't worked either.

I'm extremely frustrated at this stage and would be so very, very grateful for any advice or suggestions! Anything at all.

Thanks in advance!

Vrinda

[OsmosisStudios]

Remember how RAW files work:

Instead of taking the information from the sensor, applying a whole host of adjustments to it, and then saving it as a jpg, your camera is essentially just taking the information and packaging it straight away. What that means is that you get to/have to do all those adjustments yourself.

What it also means is that the image that comes out in the RAW editor is just as the sensor saw it, and not with all the adjustments. I know most of my images come out very cold (white balance) and very bland looking (desaturated) until I edit them. But I can always edit it back to what the preview looked like or what I want.

If you cant get it the way you like, you might have to try playing with some additional sliders. Can you post examples for us? The easiest way to do this would be to take a shot using RAW+JPG and showing the JPG and uncorrected RAW

[Vrinda]

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

Remember how RAW files work:

Instead of taking the information from the sensor, applying a whole host of adjustments to it, and then saving it as a jpg, your camera is essentially just taking the information and packaging it straight away. What that means is that you get to/have to do all those adjustments yourself.

What it also means is that the image that comes out in the RAW editor is just as the sensor saw it, and not with all the adjustments. I know most of my images come out very cold (white balance) and very bland looking (desaturated) until I edit them. But I can always edit it back to what the preview looked like or what I want.

If you cant get it the way you like, you might have to try playing with some additional sliders. Can you post examples for us? The easiest way to do this would be to take a shot using RAW+JPG and showing the JPG and uncorrected RAW

Ah, yes. I get that that's how RAW works... but what I forgot to mention is that I was getting beautiful colours before while shooting RAW. Perfect rich colours, before and after editing, and now if I go back to those old RAW files, they also lose colour. They didn't before.

That's what's frustrating me so much, the fact that it's not only affecting my current work, but photos I had already taken before this started.

[BabetteKD]

Try bringing your camera in to get fixed. Shouldn't they be recalibrated every several thousand shots?

[Swisstony10]

Since the change between RAW working the way you were expecting and the way it's working now, I'd say that it must be something you've physically changed.

A bit of a long-shot/vague idea, but have you changed the colour space setting on your camera between sRGB and AdobeRGB?

Russ.

[StillFocus]

If it's happening to older files that didn't have the problem before, then it must be a problem with the software and not the camera itself. Perhaps you changed a setting or something and didn't mean to? I'd go in and change everything back to default and see if that fixes the issue.

Edit: Nevermind, I see you already tried that. Do you have access to a different computer you could try it on?

[Vrinda]

Originally Posted by StillFocus

Edit: Nevermind, I see you already tried that. Do you have access to a different computer you could try it on?

It's doing it on my friend's mac as well, it didn't there before either. I'll test it on my mum's computer later once I've got Photoshop running on it again....

[sybren]

Maybe you can upload a raw file somewhere so that we can take a look at it?

[Twinpanther]

I had a similar problem just last week. I had changed my Photoshop settings to CMYK for some prints and forgot so all my images were coming out washed out.

I'm a newb so this could be totally off but check your "View" tab in Photoshop and make sure "Proof Colors" is checked and "Proof Setup" is set to "Windows/Mac RGB" for web or if you are working for prints "Working CMYK".

Hope you find your answer.

Twin

[Vrinda]

Originally Posted by sybren

Maybe you can upload a raw file somewhere so that we can take a look at it?

I've tried uploading it here: http://www.vrindawebb.com/files/Storage/IMG_2117.CR2 but my browser doesn't like it and keeps trying to open it in quicktime or something. Maybe you'll have better luck, or can suggest a better way of uploading a raw file.

While going through older folders just now, I noticed that after I cleared the cache of thumbnails (along with all the other Bridge settings) the other day, they're back to being the brighter colours they started off as, and then are fading again as I scroll through them.

The thing that bothers me about all this, is that I am specifically having a hard time getting the reds back to how they should be. Just desaturation is annoying but manageable, but as it is all my reds are ending up looking yellow or orange no matter what I do to them.