Lightroom Classic Auto-Tone

[Battery_Kinzie]

How many of you use auto-tone in LR Classic? I generally find it quite good, but reading old threads here and around the internet, it seems most people find it at best 'ok' and at worst 'horrific'. Has it improved so much over the years, or is it still lacking?

I will always check to see what it does with a photo of mine, and then I might make some minor adjustments here and there - but I find that 90% of the time it gets close enough that all I need to do is change highlights/shadows/exposure a small bit. And of course the fact that it works for me is all that should matter to me, but I'm also interested in what problems people have with it nowadays - perhaps I could learn something about editing styles.

To be clear, I'm talking about general travel, landscape, day-to-day photography. Nothing too niche, where I presume post-processing is a much bigger task.

 

[dj_paige]

How many of you use auto-tone in LR Classic? I generally find it quite good, but reading old threads here and around the internet, it seems most people find it at best 'ok' and at worst 'horrific'. Has it improved so much over the years, or is it still lacking?

I will always check to see what it does with a photo of mine, and then I might make some minor adjustments here and there - but I find that 90% of the time it gets close enough that all I need to do is change highlights/shadows/exposure a small bit. And of course the fact that it works for me is all that should matter to me, but I'm also interested in what problems people have with it nowadays - perhaps I could learn something about editing styles.

To be clear, I'm talking about general travel, landscape, day-to-day photography. Nothing too niche, where I presume post-processing is a much bigger task.

It is my understanding that it has been improved over the years, but I still don't like it and don't use it.

I have created presets that work for me in most (but not all) situations.

 

[Sagittarius]

How many of you use auto-tone in LR Classic? I generally find it quite good, but reading old threads here and around the internet, it seems most people find it at best 'ok' and at worst 'horrific'. Has it improved so much over the years, or is it still lacking?

I will always check to see what it does with a photo of mine, and then I might make some minor adjustments here and there - but I find that 90% of the time it gets close enough that all I need to do is change highlights/shadows/exposure a small bit. And of course the fact that it works for me is all that should matter to me, but I'm also interested in what problems people have with it nowadays - perhaps I could learn something about editing styles.

To be clear, I'm talking about general travel, landscape, day-to-day photography. Nothing too niche, where I presume post-processing is a much bigger task.

II use it quite often as a starting point.

 

[Zeee]

How many of you use auto-tone in LR Classic? I generally find it quite good, but reading old threads here and around the internet, it seems most people find it at best 'ok' and at worst 'horrific'. Has it improved so much over the years, or is it still lacking?

I will always check to see what it does with a photo of mine, and then I might make some minor adjustments here and there - but I find that 90% of the time it gets close enough that all I need to do is change highlights/shadows/exposure a small bit. And of course the fact that it works for me is all that should matter to me, but I'm also interested in what problems people have with it nowadays - perhaps I could learn something about editing styles.

To be clear, I'm talking about general travel, landscape, day-to-day photography. Nothing too niche, where I presume post-processing is a much bigger task.

I use it all of the time and I I feel the same as you about close enough. I start with Adobe Neutral so it is a valuable time saver for me to not need to go through all the sliders and adjust the clipping point for each.

It typically does not add much to Saturation but it does to Vibrance which puts some life to the least saturated colours.

As for other people's opinions? They are valid but subjective so the question is does it work for you?

 

[Dareshooter]

I find it bumps up contrast slider a tad and also adjusts the black and white point to further push contrast which in turn increases saturation. On top of that it also adds a tad more saturation and bumps up the vibrance. This is often a bit too much for my taste so I end up doing a reset or tweaking more often than not. I find it works best with Adobe Colour or Neutral but no so good with Canon Camera Matching profiles .It’s worth giving a go though as you can learn from what it’s doing and from it’s mistakes and successes.

 

[Zeee]

I find it bumps up contrast slider a tad and also adjusts the black and white point to further push contrast which in turn increases saturation. On top of that it also adds a tad more saturation and bumps up the vibrance. This is often a bit too much for my taste so I end up doing a reset or tweaking more often than not. I find it works best with Adobe Colour or Neutral but no so good with Canon Camera Matching profiles .It’s worth giving a go though as you can learn from what it’s doing and from it’s mistakes and successes.

That I agree with 100%. Works best with Adobe profiles and why apply it before using Adobe Denoise AI as I think it does a better job with the RAW file. That is the only adjustment I make before using Denoise.

When it was first released it was pretty bad with Canon profiles. It over protected highlights and decreased exposure far too much but Adobe fixed that before the next version came out.

 

[Greg Edwards]

It's quite good most of the time for quick "snaps", but my main complaint is that I find it opens the shadows up too much. I usually lower the shadows to about 1/2 of what the auto setting applies.

I found this article to be quite useful

How to Make Lightroom's Improved "Auto" Button Even Better! - Lightroom Killer Tips

 

[Zeee]

It's quite good most of the time for quick "snaps", but my main complaint is that I find it opens the shadows up too much. I usually lower the shadows to about 1/2 of what the auto setting applies.

I found this article to be quite useful

How to Make Lightroom's Improved "Auto" Button Even Better! - Lightroom Killer Tips

This is why I use Adobe Neutral. No HDR look and it does not have to struggle with highlights. Colour profiles curves in profiles like Adobe Colour add a lot of punch.

 

[Zeee]

As for people saying it is horrific, it definitely was with LR6. Sensei was introduced in LrC 7 so you have to be aware they may be referring to LR6 or CS6.

As for speed editing I did a charity shoot. Between Adaptive ISO presets and Auto I processed about 500 files in just over an hour. For more serious work I edit Auto’s results.

 

[Zeee]

It's quite good most of the time for quick "snaps", but my main complaint is that I find it opens the shadows up too much. I usually lower the shadows to about 1/2 of what the auto setting applies.

I found this article to be quite useful

How to Make Lightroom's Improved "Auto" Button Even Better! - Lightroom Killer Tips

This of course is subjective but I'm not sure I see an issue with the shadows in that example he shows. However I'm imprinted with Ansel Adams teachings which are to show details in shadows and highlights. Of course he did B&W landscapes.

To me Auto is just doing its job which may not work for everyone.

 

[Reilly Diefenbach]

Lightroom's AI Auto is excellent. Hundreds of pics done in a few minutes close to what you would do manually. The problem with presets is that they do the same things to the picture every time. Auto otoh is interactive with the particular exposure. Here's an example of eight different sliders with one click:




GBH




One Click

Now would be the time to tweak sharpness, etc. with a preset.



View attachment 7db444930a144b5c988bfbc76e0b7925.jpg
Finished

It doesn't work every time, but it bats a high percentage.

 

[robgendreau]

It has definitely improved over the years.

I like to use it just because I often have really awful looking raws, shot to preserve highlights, so the shadows and mids are so dark hard to tell what's going on. So it's just a one click way to get something more useful, and I find it often sets black and white point at a good starting point for me.

For some reason, at least with my cameras, it doesn't do as well when using a BW profile. Or maybe that's just my taste.

I sometimes just use a film sim as a starting point too. Sometimes it gives me ideas about how to proceed I might not have thought of.

 

[Zeee]

It has definitely improved over the years.

I like to use it just because I often have really awful looking raws, shot to preserve highlights, so the shadows and mids are so dark hard to tell what's going on. So it's just a one click way to get something more useful, and I find it often sets black and white point at a good starting point for me.

For some reason, at least with my cameras, it doesn't do as well when using a BW profile. Or maybe that's just my taste.

I'll use it first before converting to B&W.

I sometimes just use a film sim as a starting point too. Sometimes it gives me ideas about how to proceed I might not have thought of.

 

[Ken Seals]

It's quite good most of the time for quick "snaps", but my main complaint is that I find it opens the shadows up too much. I usually lower the shadows to about 1/2 of what the auto setting applies.

That describes my experience with LrC Auto exactly

 

[graybalanced]

How many of you use auto-tone in LR Classic? I generally find it quite good, but reading old threads here and around the internet, it seems most people find it at best 'ok' and at worst 'horrific'. Has it improved so much over the years, or is it still lacking?

The old algorithmic Auto worked poorly. The tipping point was after Adobe started training it with AI. After that, it got good enough that many of us started using Auto as a starting point. Older posts might be complaining about the poor old pre-AI version.

 

[sansansansan]

It would be amazing to be able to tune the auto-tone to my liking, or at least implement a general offset. I fundamentaly like what it does, but I would like to apply less saturation and shadow boosting in general.

 

[davidedric]

It's one click to apply, and one to back out if you don't like it.

I often find it gives me a decent starting point, though sometimes not.

Either way, it's been much improved over the years, and I'm glad to have it there.

 

[Zeee]

It's one click to apply, and one to back out if you don't like it.

I often find it gives me a decent starting point, though sometimes not.

Either way, it's been much improved over the years, and I'm glad to have it there.

After switching to Adobe Neutral I have found I have to add a more black and contrast compared to something like Adobe Color.