PP with RAW in lightroom

[amymnc]

Hope I read the rules correctly and am asking in the right place!
Recently started shooting in manual and according to my camera meter and the little jpeg preview I see on the screen, things look great. I get home and upload the RAW file in lightroom and feel like I'm starting at square one.
I stare at the screen and think, well poo how do I get that perfect exposure that I saw in the camera now that I have all this dark dull stuff here going on? When using the exposure slider I'm keeping it to where the shadows and highlights aren't blown out, trying my best with the rest, etc... So how do I know when the photos is just where it's "supposed" to be? Is it just a matter of experience, preference, training your eyes?
Frustration overload here. Perhaps I need to go back to JPEG for a while. Perhaps I could use a good beginning to end tutorial. I have Scott Kelby's LR2 book and that helps, but I can't make him come out of the book and look at my picture to give it thumbs up or thumbs down

Where do you start when learning to process RAW? Thanks for the help!

[acedrew]

I think a lot of people struggle with this, I know I do! This is the point where you know how to make a technically correct photo, you're just not sure how to manipulate it to make it really reflect you. I think the only way to really do this is read tutorials, which you can find on this site, as well as all over the internet. And just take pieces from each and try to make something that really speaks TO you, when you do that, you'll have something that speaks FOR you, and that's really what it's all about. Expressing yourself through this great medium which is photography! Good Luck!

Andrew Rodgers
Perfected Perspectives -- Photography by Andrew Rodgers | Andrew Rodgers (acedrew) on Twitter

[mipo]

It is always a matter of learning, reading then trial & error.

The best part with Lightroom & Raw pictures is can can always go back later & re-process the whole developpement without affecting your original file and then bring it to your view.

[MattG]

One other thing that may help is ensuring that the camera profile in Lightroom reflects your camera - this is under the develop tab under Camera Calibration (last box in the right hand menu under LR2.)

There is a blog article on this subject that may help:

Relevant Article

[amymnc]

I have downloaded those and it helps a bit. There's not many cameras in the list, but I tend to get good results from the D2X beta 1 choice.
Thanks for the input!

[kirbinster]

You don't say which camera you are using, but lightroom knows. If you choose either the camera standard profile or the camera (vivid or vibrant - forget term) it will apply the correct one for your camera - at least it does for my three Nikons.

When Lightoom first imports your raw it briefly shows the embedded jpeg that is in the raw file before it renders the full raw version. You can set default settings for it to always apply. For example if you always want to boost the saturation, or the sharpness or other settings it is possible to save that as an action to apply on every import. That way you don't have to start from scratch each time.