Adaptive Colour Unreliable

[Paul_Blake]

I set up some presets using Adaptive Colour and some (mainly luminance) masks.

Nearly every time I come back to photos I've applied the reset to and look good, no longer look good (eg they become overexposed). Sometimes they seem to come good by themselves (eventually), sometimes they don't. I can't work out what's going on. I'm about to dump Adaptive Colour for presets and try Adobe Colour.  

Are there known issues with using Adaptive Colour in presets? The values you assign to the preset one day that look good, the next day look really bad on the same photo. Seems to be an endless loop of adjustments! 

Are there any rules to follow when using Adaptive Colour?

[Tarun Saini]

Hi @Paul_Blake,

Thanks for reaching out! What is the name of the Adobe app you're using?

We're here to help, just need some info.

Regards,

Tarun

[kglad]

because all your other posts are in the lrc forum, this will be moved there.  

[JohanElzenga]

Adaptive Color uses AI to generate invisible masks, and because of that it needs to update those mask if you apply certain edits, such as Remove. You'll see the icon in the toolbar turn yellow. Sometimes updating does not seem to create a visible difference, but at other times the difference is quite a lot.

[johnrellis]

[This post contains formatting and embedded images that don't appear in email. View the post in your Web browser.]

When you come back to a photo that now looks bad, is the AI Edit Status button yellow?

If so, then before anyone jumps in here, click on the button and post a full-resolution screenshot of the dropdown from the button that appears. There are different answers depending on what you see.

[Paul_Blake]

My problem (which again happened today) is that I can set up masks etc in a preset using Adaptive colour and it looks great. Turn on the computer the next day and the photos are all very overexposed and needs a lot of rework. I have had to fix them up again so many times. I'm going to give up on Adaptive colour and just use Adobe Colour.

[johnrellis]

"Turn on the computer the next day and the photos are all very overexposed and needs a lot of rework. "

What about my previous question?

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/adaptive-colour-unreliable/m-p/15525745...

[Paul_Blake]

Sorry. No. The AI status button is not yellow. There's no updating needed. ChatGPT says what I've copied below. That's what I've been experieinceing. I've spent weeks redoing the presets every day because the next day the results are rubbish!

Adove Adaptive Colur doesn’t “bake in” a fixed rendering. Each time you open or reprocess a file, Lightroom/Camera Raw re-analyses the image and re-adapts the profile to it. So:

• Last night → it looked fine, because Adaptive gave you one interpretation.

• Today → on reopening, Adaptive re-ran its algorithm and decided differently, so the look changed.

• Result → your presets, which rely on the starting profile rendering, now look completely off.

[JohanElzenga]

ChatGPT talks rubbish, as it sometimes does. I use the Adaptive profile (applied via a preset, just like you do) on all my images, adding new images every single day, and I never see this on restart. ChatGTP tries to give you an answer that fits what you see, even if it doesn't know the answer. So it simply makes up an explanation (this known problem in AI models is called 'hallucinating').

The Adaptive profile does not re-run its algorithms each time you start up, it runs once and then sticks to it. That is why you sometimes have to manually force an update! If it seems to re-run for you, then I suspect you have a problem with where the results are stored ('catalogname.lrcat-data'). If that gets corrupted or otherwise inaccessible to Lightroom, then something like this may occur. Try moving this out of your catalog folder, so Lightroom will rebuild it. See if that stops this behavior (it will occur one more time in order to rebuild).

[JohanElzenga]

Another possibility is that corrupted preferences cause this. You could try resetting them: 

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/how-do-i-reset-lightrooms-preferences/

[Paul_Blake]

Haha, yes ChatGPT does not always get things right!

Today I retarted Lightroom after first getting the problem again. The problem persisted (extreme overexposure) for all the photos using the presets.

I waited for about 15 minutes to see if anything would change. The problem persisted.

I tried applying my presets to new photos. The preset settings were being attached to the photo, but not being applied correctly. The results looked just as bad as the photos that "went bad overnight".

I left my computer running and came back about 4 hours later and the presets have now been correctly applied to all photos.

It would appear that if I leave Lightroom open long enough the presests eventually get applied.

I presume the time of day (it seems to work well at night!) has nothing to do with it!

I was a bit suspicious that there was sometimes a long delay with applying presets as they've soemtimes "come good" after waiting for lengthy periods. I don't want to have to wait for an hour or so after turning on my Mac before I can start editing again.

Is there something that needs to happen in the background that I can force to initiate earlier? This behaviour of delayed preset application is extremely difficult to work with.

I am suspicious that the interaction of masks with Adaptive Colour is the culprit. Could it be that the general settings are applied immediately and the mask settings (I have six masks per photo) take a long time before they are applied? 

[JohanElzenga]

Like I said: nothing should change overnight or on a restart. A large number of masks should not change that either. Lightroom shows you a preview and that preview should not be updated just because it restarted. If changes occur on restart, then there is something wrong. I offered two possible causes.

[Paul_Blake]

After some further fault finding I have discovered that the problem is caused by the automatic brightness setting on my Studio Display (see attached settings screenshot).

If set ON, the screen brightness starts at some default value (which is relatively bright, but not normally perceptible) then after about 30 seconds starts to slowly oscillate up and down for about 30 minutes before finally settling down to a value. This oscillation magnitude starts quite large, then slowly reduces (ie damped oscillation). For my edited photos in Lightroom this behaviour has a dramatic effect, though for the other windows and Lightroom panels etc on the screen it has no perceived impact. The photos initially display as overexposed, then slowly become underexposed, then overexposed etc  until the display eventually determines its optimal brightness level. At this point the photos finally look like they were the day before. Whilst those oscillations are occuring there is no point trying to edit any photo as the results won't be reliable. 

Since I have turned off the auto brightness the problem raised in this post has not recurred.