What is Lightroom doing to my photos and how do I make it stop?

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009

I shoot raw images with an EOS50D. I load them off the card using Lightroom 2.0. Then I start paging through them. The first time I see a photo it’s a plausible, nice neutral tone. Then Lightroom thinks for a few seconds while displaying the message “Loading…”, adjusts something, and the whole photo is suddenly a lot redder than it should be.

How do I tell Lightroom not to do this? Whatever it’s doing, it’s screwing with the proper color balance of the photos. The photos seem clearly better before Lightroom mucks with them. I can usually get back to some semblance of what the photo should be by adjusting tone and temperature and such in the Develop mode; but why should I have to? The photos started out fine until Lightroom mangled them. Any ideas?