How do I start with in-camera JPEG settings in Lightroom?

Question

I'm a novice shooting in RAW and find that half the time my camera JPEG images come out better than my Lightroom tweaks to RAW files.

So to give myself a better start I'd like to apply the JPEG settings that are applied automatically by the camera to my RAW files in lightroom so that initially my RAW files look exactly like the JPEG files.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

In the develop module, on the right side, find Camera Calibration. From the "Process" dropdown, choose the style that goes with the one you have selected in your camera (that automatically gets applied to the JPEGs coming out).

From there, you can do whatever you want. If you want this applied automatically during import, create a new preset on the left side, and then in the import screen select that as the "develop preset" and it will automatically apply tha

Answer 2

In case Jordan's solution doesn't get you all the way to reverse-engineering your JPG settings, I think this is one of the few scenarios where RAW+JPG makes sense, if you've got that option.

Using this setting, you'll end up with two versions of each file, and you can do some A/B comparisons to help you reverse-engineer the JPG settings you're looking for. In addition to color rendering (which you can see and adjust in that calibration panel), pay attention to white balance, sharpening and noise reduction - you've probably got settings in your camera to control how these are applied when JPGs are created, and these make a big difference in the appearance of your photos, too.