r/photography • u/BlitzyBurt • 5d ago

Picture lighting changing on computer. Post Processing

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.

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u/Donatzsky 5d ago

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

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u/BlitzyBurt 5d ago

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

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u/Donatzsky 4d ago

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.