OK, so where in my settings or preferences or something like that do I make them look, umm, like, the same shot? Ugh They look nothing alike. I am a techno idiot. Please do not flog me. Why do my RAW + JPEG files look COMPLETELY different in ACR? RAW and Large normal JPEGs from a Canon 5D, and my JPEG settings were very modest.
TIA.
Michael

RAW images are unprocessed. JPEGs are processed by the camera for white balance, color, sharpness etc. RAWs need to be processed and have certain settings applied, and they give you MUCH more workable files than JPEGs.... since it is in fact the RAW image data, not a processed and compressed file... the camera literally throws information away when it's processing/compressing JPEG images.

To add to what trevor said, RAW is not an acronym it means "uncooked" or "untouched" even in camera format terms. not trying to be mean or a jerk so please dont get angry at me.....I am just trying to explain

this is the way a nikon rep explained it to me......

think it as a piece of raw chicken. it is just sitting there and nothing is done to it, but with some processing/cooking you can make any dish you want. On the other hand the jpeg is something that you just order off a menu(i am getting hungry writing this lol)

the reason why the jpgs & the raw images look different in ACR is because your camera creates that jpg for you at the time of capture putting in all the data as the camera sees it into that jpg.

When ACR looks at a raw image, it does a "best guess" to try to present what the camera saw, instead of the camera pushing out a jpg.

There's even a little jpg embedded in the RAW image as well, which has the settings the camera used at the time.

When you open a raw image in ACR, AT FIRST, you see the embedded thumbnail jpg that's inside the raw data, and if you watch closely, as ACR reads the raw data, Adobe does a "best guess" to present the image as the camera intended, and the image will change slightly.

This shift was REALLY bad on my images from my MarkIII last year. It's not as bad on images from my 5D, but I can still see the image change from the raw-embedded-jpg into the raw thumbnail preview as ACR reads & interpolates the data.

Adobe & Canon point fingers at each other.
Canon will say that you should use DPP because that's Canon's software that can read the RAW data correctly, getting the image spot on.
Adobe will say that Canon's raw data is proprietary & that Canon won't release their data or color specs to them completely, so they have to do a "best guess" to analyze the data in the raw image & present it as close to what the camera collected.
It's all very frustrating.
SUPPOSEDLY, the latest ACR plugins do a better job at that datg analysis, but I'm not sure.
When I upgraded to CS3 last year, that color shift was worse in CS3 ACR than it was in CS2 ACR, so I downgraded back to CS2 so I could get back to my 5D happy place. I haven't tried CS3 since, and I hate DPP, and I don't like LR, either. But at least check to make sure you have the latest ACR plugin.

~Carey

Aka: acronym hell.

So totally agree about cs3's sad place.

I know this is a probably a stupid question, but what is DPP?!

Also, all of this being true, make sure you have not selected "auto" in ACR. That makes ACR decide how the RAW should be treated. That would compound the issue.

Carry nailed it. I've had these problems as well - I love RAW but dislike that I have to process my images so much to make it look like how it was supposed to look like in the first place. Why can't Canon just make their data open source, or at least share or sell the code to Adobe?

Canon DPP is, unfortunately, still the most precise RAW processing program that I've found thus far. It would make sense that Canon knows how to interpret their own files and data more than any other company - after all it is their own data. RAWs just look absolutely heavenly in DPP - it looks like the Jpegs but better - more depth to color. In my lightroom, RAWs look like a mess

This is probably the most compelling reason that would sway me back to shooting jpegs. I'm still hanging in there though..I'd rather have the latitude that RAWs give. I've been experimenting with color calibration in lightroom/ACR and it does help.

Hey for us Nikon shooters, does anyone know if Capture NX will process the RAW file the same way the camera processes it to create the JPEG.

ACR will initially process your RAW files to whatever settings that you have set as the default settings. Your default may be set to auto which may or may not give you a good result. If you open up a file and adjust it to look similar to the JPEG then save this as your default, your files should then open similarly to the JPEG.

My settings have the White balance - as shot
Exposure, Recovery, Fill & Black at 0
Brightness at 50
Contrast at 25
Clarity at 5
Vibrance & Saturation at +5

The program will remember different defaults for different models (I don't know if this works for different cameras of the same model)

If it looks pretty good on the defaults you can then give each file a slight tweak to make it look much better than the JPEG does.