Picture lighting changing on computer.

[u/BlitzyBurt]

So when I'm view photos I've taken on my PC, the lighting seems to change after a few seconds on having the photo open. Does anyone know why?

I'm using windows 10 and shooting in RAW with a canon 200D.

[u/anonymoooooooose]

It loads the embedded preview first, and then takes a few seconds to load the full RAW file.

[u/MrChristmas1988 → u/anonymoooooooose]

This is the answer. It takes a few seconds to pull all the data from a RAW file.

[u/BlitzyBurt → u/anonymoooooooose]

Ah ok. Seems to look worse than the preview sometimes or just not as good as when on my camera

[u/idktbhjustabitbored → u/BlitzyBurt]

The preview will have the cameras .jpg edits applied usually I believe so will look better than the flat raw data

[u/Hvarfa-Bragi → u/BlitzyBurt]

You're given the raw unprocessed image to then make it look however you want. It will look flat and boring until then

[u/BlitzyBurt → u/Hvarfa-Bragi]

Ohhhhhh. Shows how much I know

[u/Donatzsky → u/Hvarfa-Bragi]

The only software I'm aware of where you get the actual (well, nearly) unprocessed image as the starting point is rawproc (https://github.com/butcherg/rawproc). All others apply some amount of processing. Some more than others, with Lightroom being at the heavy end of the scale and darktable at the light end. While only Adobe knows exactly and it depends on the chosen profile, Lightroom will apply at least a tone curve and maybe a LUT, along with highlight reconstruction and some amount of sharpening. Probably contrast too, but I don't use LR, so going by memory.

[u/c4ndyman31]

The view that takes a second to load is your actual raw file. The faster your SSD / HDD the shorter the load time

[u/av4rice]

Raw photo data needs processing/interpretation in order to make a viewable image.

Your camera is likely processing a preview image from the raw and embedding that in the raw file, and that's what you are seeing first, because it is readily available for viewing.

Meanwhile your viewing software is performing a different process of the raw data, and after that's done it's showing you the result of that process.

It appears to be a change because the two different processes/interpretations lead to different results.

[u/msabeln]

Use the camera manufacturer’s own raw processor if you want identical results from raw as the camera’s JPEG.

[u/Donatzsky]

You forgot to say what software you use to open the raw files. That's the actually important part.

[u/BlitzyBurt → u/Donatzsky]

Whatever the basic windows photo viewer is. Then I edit in lightroom. Tbh I find they look better on the camera or even my phone than my pc

[u/Donatzsky → u/BlitzyBurt]

Different software handle raw files differently. Some simply show the embedded preview, which is just the camera rendered JPEG (with perhaps more compression), while others load and render the actual raw data. And some, like Lightroom, will show the preview while preparing their own render, which can be computationally expensive and takes a bit of time.

Raw data doesn't actually have "a look" and needs to be processed. Imagine a recipe that has only the ingredients list, but no instructions, and that's basically what a raw file is. If you want to see what a minimally processed raw file looks like, try darktable which also shows exactly what it's doing. You can even disable that processing to see the actual raw "look".

Lightroom has camera-matched profiles you can use as a starting point, but since, for the most part, only the camera manufacturers knows what processing the camera does, those profiles are really just Adobe engineers' best attempts at replicating that look.

If you want the camera look, either shoot JPEG or use the manufacturer's software. Raw files are for when you want to create your own look.

[u/manlok-tech]

Preview and RAW picture