Does Picture Style affect how image looks on the rear screen?

drmikeinpdx

Celebrating 20 years of model photography!
I'm currently using a 5D4. My images often look great on the rear LCD, but not so good when I get them into Lightroom. Sometimes, even with all my Lightroom skills, I can't duplicate the look I recall seeing on the LCD screen. I'm sure you've heard this before!

If i understand correctly, the camera applies an enhancement process to the RAW image and creates a small JPG to display on the rear LCD screen.

I'm wondering if changing the Picture Style settings also changes the image appearance on the LCD screen?

I currently have the setting on Standard. I am thinking of changing it to Neutral or even manually setting all the Picture Style values to zero in order to keep the camera from enhancing what I see on the screen.

There are many ways one can look at this problem and I'm wondering what my fellow CR photographers have done about it?
 

drmikeinpdx

Celebrating 20 years of model photography!
I'm going to try the neutral setting as recommend by Brian Carnahan.

The 'Canon UniWB' is interesting, but would interfere with my work flow. I like to show the LCD screen images to models I'm working with to boost their confidence and apparently the UniWB method makes the image look pretty strange.

Thanks for the advice!
 
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I've found the closest to a raw file on 5D screens is the Neutral style with sharpness pushed right down to 0 and both contrast and saturation lowered by 1 from their default. Lightroom's neutral profile doesn't have quite as much contrast or colour as Canon's in-camera one, so reducing the contrast and colour in-camera makes it line up with Lightroom better. I push the sharpness all the way down to 0 so I can check focus accurately. If you let the camera sharpen the little preview on the back of the camera, it's easy to think something is more in focus than it actually is.

Make sure you leave the screen brightness in the middle, too.
 
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Dec 1, 2016
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I would recommend the Neutral style. I personally uses Faithful style.

Read somewhere that Neutral is a "perceptual" rendering while Faithful is a "colorimetric" rendering.

Canon says, "Rather than the overall impression of a photo, the aim of the 'Faithful' Picture Style is accurate reproduction of the colors of the subject."

Still, the differences are usually small and Faithful "tends to produce colors similar to those of the 'Neutral' Picture Style"

For training purpose, I may set to Monochrome style
 
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My understanding is Faithful is the colour the sensor sees with no adjustments made to compensate for any tint or bias the sensor might have. Neutral takes into account the sensor's different sensitivities and adjusts the colour to try to match what the human eye sees. I think the idea is Faithful is for people who would rather fix the camera's colour themselves and Neutral is for people who are happy to trust Canon to judge the basic adjustments for them.

Either way, the way Lightroom handles the colour profiles is different to the in-camera profiles, and so for judging how a raw file will look the Neutral profile is more accurate to the file you'll actually be working with. I've checked this against correction profiles made with a colorchecker and it was consistent under tungsten, fluorescent, and day light. Lightroom's Neutral is closer to what a colorchecker profile gives you in hue, saturation, and contrast, while Lightroom's Faithful has a little more contrast between green hues and a little less between skin tones compared to what a colorchecker profile makes. Lightroom's Neutral profile for Canon raw is really neutral.

But it's definitely the smallest difference and I only make the distinction for jobs where I've been specifically asked to deliver a really even, accurate file. I think in most cases you're best off judging colour and contrast on a photo-by-photo basis.
 
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