Problems with RAW & Jpeg files in LR3

[Elvie]

Yesterday for the first time I took some photos in both RAW & jpeg & imported them into Lightroom 3. The jpegs were in monochrome. Once imported they intially showed on screen in monochrome but as I watched they sequentially became coloured.

I know the RAW files would have retained all the colour information but the jpegs should be black & white. I can only see the colour files. The metadata in the right hand side of the screen listed the files as being CR2 with jpeg sidecar files. I ended up opening it all in Bridge ( which came with my copy of Elements 8 but I have never previously used) There I could see both sets of files, so selected & copied the jpegs to the desk top then reimported them into LR3 which was a bit long winded to say the least! Where am I going wrong & why couldn't I see both file types initially in Lightroom?

[potterm]

What you're seeing in the Library is in fact the RAW file which has an embedded JPEG preview image inside, not the separate JPEG files. If you took the picture in B&W on camera, then this embedded preview image will also be in B&W.

Once LR has displayed the preview it then goes to work producing a more accurate preview based on the RAW image (which is full colour), which is why you see the image change from B&W to colour after a time.

I'm not a LR3 expert, but I think there's an option to treat JPEGs associated with a RAW as either the same file or as separate files in the library. I think it's on by default, so if you want to manage the JPEGs completely separately you'll need to turn this option off. However, I wouldn't recommend it - one of the more powerful features of LR is the scope it gives for editing RAWs - much better to generate B&W's from the RAW image using LR than relying on your camera to do it. There are a multitude of presets in LR for doing this. Also, if you separate them, then your library will show up as having twice as many files inside - one of the strengths of LR is it's ability to group files associated with the same photograph together making them easier to manage.

Martin