Lightroom users: why are the pictures I export pale?

[vagrant10]

I've been thinking of switching from PaintShopPro x2 to Lightroom, but I'm running into an issue that leaves me quite unhappy w/ lightroom. Basically, I make the adjustments til I'm happy, but when I save the file (export), the saved file is much more pale and washed out compared to what I see in the Lightroom "develop" screen.

I must be doing something wrong... thing is, the exported versions are saving the crops etc, and I've tried saving the same photos w/ different contrast settings, but the differences seem very muted compared to the differences I was setting in lightroom.

Any tips to a frustrated post processor?

here's an example - the color of the berries are too pink (nothing like what is on my lightroom "develop" screen) and everything seems to lack contrast.

[Peter Zack]

Humm. I use lightroom and like the exported versions. I'm no pro but I would suggest trying something. Import a file and then do nothing to it. Then export the file. Compare it to the original and see if there is a difference. It should be the same as the original. I didn't think that Lightroom has and import/export presets that alter the shot unless you do it yourself.

I assume you are using V2

[vagrant10]

Thanks Peter, I'll give that a shot.

In the meantime, I thought I'd take a crack at this same pic w/ PSP x2, and the saved result is much closer to what I was going after. I'm finding that even in PSPx2 that the saved version is slightly lighter than what I see on the PSP screen. Perhaps it's a result from converting to JPG? Nevertheless, I still find that PSP is not washing out the picure nearly as much as lightroom. Here's the result:



One question: when you save the adjusted version in Lightroom, do you use export, or export w/ presets? I've tried both, by the way w/ similar results in terms of washed out colors. So far, I'm liking the export option because I can tweak the saved title in case I'm saving multiple versions of the same picture.

[Damn Brit]

Just a thought, when you save them as JPEGS, what quality do you use.

[Peter Zack]

I just hit "Export" not with presets. I like that feature as well. Like adjusting an image in colour and then going back and hitting B&W or something else and exporting a different version.

[vagrant10]

Originally Posted by Damn Brit

Just a thought, when you save them as JPEGS, what quality do you use.

I'm using the highest quality on each... interesting thought though since the lightroom jpg's are around 3 mb vs around 4.5 for the PSPx2 versions...

[Damn Brit]

Originally Posted by vagrant10

I'm using the highest quality on each... interesting thought though since the lightroom jpg's are around 3 mb vs around 4.5 for the PSPx2 versions...

That's weird, when I save Jpegs in Elements at maximum quality they are bigger than your lightroom ones.

[stevebrot]

Export in Lightroom is a little tricky for two reasons:

1. Lightroom uses a managed color environment with a wide gamut colorspace (adobeRGB)
2. You can export with adobeRBG as the colorspace, but other programs may not be able to support managed color and/or that gamut. Exporting with sRGB (a narrower gamut) will result in the loss of some color richness.

Translation...As it leaves Lightroom you may lose something.

I noticed this about a month ago when I upgraded to a wide-gamut LCD monitor. Files that looked great in Lightroom looked yuck in color-dumb Internet Explorer. View the same files in Firefox and they looked great again.

I finally compromised by using the default sRGB color profile for the monitor and standardized to export to the sRGB color space. My images lose a little punch, but at least they look good when viewed from the Web.

Steve

FWIW...If some of you color experts want to correct or expand on my explanation, feel free. My understanding of this stuff is pretty rudimentary.

[pop4]

Have a check of what Color Space you're exporting your photos at, is it sRGB, adoobe1998, ProPhoto, etc