Color difference?

Im trying to figure out why when I import a photo into Lightroom 2 the colors or maybe WB are off??

I shoot in RAW and i just noticed the color setting was sRGB.... should i just change it on the camera to Adobe RGB??

sRGB is fine, I use lightroom also.

RAW images are geared to pick up the detail, they still need to be developed! You need to sharpen and increase your saturation, these can even be set to be done automatically upon import. The beauty about shooting raw is you have all the data there to work with and any changes you make can be undone.

So its normal for a picture to be brighter and more saturated on your cameras display then when you just important to lightroom? I would of thought if anything you would atleast get the picture in lightroom that you saw on your cameras display.

Not really, lightroom shows the settings as specified in the EXIF data as set by the picture. However 12 megapixels on a 3 inch screen designed for outdoor viewing will be brighter and appear more saturated than on a good quality 20 inch monitor.

Monitor quality (lumens, brightness, contrast, ratio, etc..) will also change your view.

after importing to LR should i just keep them a sRGB or should i go with adobe.... 99.9% of my shot will go to the web.

You don't have to worry about color space while you are in LR. But when you export, then you should choose sRGB.

I've always heard that it's best to keep the same color space settings (in sync) on your camera, Lightroom, Photoshop, monitor (if it's an option) and your printer profile.. And, I'm not sure if I've got mine correct either..

Can someone shed some light on that theory?

I work in the largest color space till the end. And then only for web (sRGB).

Having 16-bits, instead of 8, avoids "banding" in smooth colored areas.

Matthew

PS I also use aRGB in camera.

Unless your out-of-camera processing software is the same as or calibrated like your in-camera processing software it's probably doing the processing slightly different. You can set the in-camera processing parameters and that will be seen in the jpeg on the LCD, but depending on the raw processing software may or may not show up when it makes it's first preview. I'm not up on Lightroom, but in Adobe Camera Raw the camera profile can be switched from default to several other choices that may match the in-camera processing better. You can always save your own custom default. I find keeping the camera set to neutral processing parameters gives me a fairly similar histogram on the LCD as I'm going to find when i open it up in ACR. If I were to crank up the saturation in-camera the histogram and LCD display would change, but that goes away as soon as I open it in ACR because it's applying it's own (or the ones I set) processing defaults.

If you are shooting raw it doesn't really matter what the camera is set to. The color space is set by the raw processing software. Lightroom uses ProPhoto RGB. In ACR and Photoshop you can choose the color space.

Keeping everything set to the same color space keeps it simple. What's important is that you make the proper conversions if switching color spaces. For instance if I process in Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB right before I save as a jpeg (for web or to be sent to the lab for C prints) I convert the color space of the file to sRGB. Typically I process all the photos in ACR, then batch export as jpegs all at once using Image Processor. It has a box that can be checked to convert them all to sRGB.