Which camera? (while they all share the same extension, NEFs from different cameras can be very different).
Nikon’s software (apparently) has a bad habit of installing a NEF plugin which can take over from Adobe camera Raw at unexpected times – (have a look at the FAQs on the Adobe forum for ACR for details on this – Elements 3 and Photoshop CS use the same raw converter although the user interface is slightly different) This may be causing the problem.
If it’s not the NEF plug-in, try going to your user>library>preferences folder and deleting the Adobe Camera RAW prefs. I see this problem occasionally in PE 3 with the .mrw files from my minolta.
Thanks for the ideas. I had tried the Nikon plug-in removal, but that did nothing. I will try deleting the prefs file.
Thanks again.
OK, so I tried deleting the preferences file from the Library and still, the file is rendered a very, very unsaturated version of the preview image. Has anyone else experienced this? I can get the image to look like I want it too, but it seems to me that I should be able to start with the correct image from the start, requiring less input from me. Any more information would be helpful.
Thanks,
Tim
Some people have reported that ACR does produce some quirky color results at times. I never really followed the issue sufficiently to find out if it was tied to a particular camera, or specific manufacturer’s RAW type, or something entirely different. I adopted Phase One’s Capture One as my RAW conversion software awhile back and only use ACR if I’m in a real hurry. One thing I have noticed from personal use, ACR has in some cases seemed to introduce some peculiar color shifts and color casts in certain instances that Capture One doesn’t. I haven’t spent much time trying to track down what might be the underlying cause or if there are any common factors that lead to ACR doing this.
One thing I have noticed is that ACR’s preview of RAW files in PSE3 seem a bit washed out and adjustments (particularly saturation) appear to be understated. What may look fine in the ACR preview, become more intense once the file is passed on to PSE3. This doesn’t seem to happen for me when using ACR with PSCS2 (I just got PSCS2 and played around with ACR for several hours last night), although some color casts still appear with ACR/PSCS2 that don’t with Capture One.
When I use ACR, I only try to get the exposure values in the ballpark and then send the file into PSE3/PSCS2 for further work. When I use Capture One, the preview ‘accuracy’ of adjustments is pretty much 100% and I am able to reliably make more detailed changes knowing that what I’m seeing in Capture One is what’s going to appear when the file is moved into PSE3/PSCS2.
I believe Thomas Knoll does most of the work in coding ACR. I’ve never seen him in this forum, but he does maintain an active presence in the Photoshop/IR forum. If you are having consistent problems, perhaps you could post a query there and get a more detailed reply.
