Why do RAW files appear washed out?
RAW files are not images yet. They are usually missing color-components on each pixels, so to see a RAW file it must be converted into an image. Different software apply different conversions to show you RAW files as if they were images. That is why RAW files can appear different in Picasa and Lightroom. The software is pretty much free to do what it wants at that point. Some RAW files actually have a JPEG embedded for preview purposes. In this case it is easy for the software to show you something. This depends on your camera. Sometimes it is a thumbnail, other times it is a full-size image. When you have only the small preview, you will sometimes see your images change in some software which loads the small JPEG as a preview and then uses the RAW data to render. If you ONLY shoot RAW and thought not to care about image parameters (WB, Color, Saturation, Tone, Hue, Contrast, etc… depending on your camera), then you should know that if your files have an embedded JPEG, they use those
