Lightroom Classic Auto Sync Auto Tone

[hogball]

When Auto Sync is selecred and Auto tone adjustment is applied to a pic in Develop, are the same tone adjustments applied to all selected pics or does LR apply Auto tone adjustment to each pic by individually analyzing and applying the adjustments necessary for each pic?

[Neox99]

Is that not something that simple testing by you, using just a few test images, could determine?

[Jim Wilde]

The latter, i.e. each selected image is analyzed separately and the appropriate Auto Settings are applied to each.

[richardplondon · Accepted solution]

There's Auto tone in the Basic panel; there's Auto WB; there's As Shot WB; there's Upright; and OTOH there are the particular settings resulting from having used these controls on a particular image.

Lightroom has several methods to "spread processing across" multiple images, and these can operate differently (between these respective methods, and also between LR versions for the same method) so far as HOW those auto modes / settings will get treated.

There's Auto Sync, there's Copy/Paste, there's Sync, there's Previous. There's Develop presets, which include an optional Auto checkbox. And there's Set Default for a given camera / file type / optionally ISO etc.

It's more complicated than one single simple answer can cover, so the best advice is indeed Just Try It.

• You may sometimes want the fixed RESULTS from the processing of one image, however achieved, to get copied onto others -.desiring those identical slider values because of what you want to then do with those pictures (compositing / stop motion / whatever).
• You may sometimes want the FACT of such a mode to spread between pictures, such that each one is processed according to the same general intention, doing so via differing slider values depending on the capture and the picture content.

AFAICT the trend over successive versions of LR has been more and more towards delivering the latter sort of outcome.

So if you want to get the former sort of result, you can "trick" LR by changing something (which is within the scope of the Auto tool) and then changing that back to the same value. This now shows up as Custom / Manual processing rather than as Auto processing, and that is what then gets copied over to other photos.

In the case of the Auto tone in Basic, whenever the Auto title goes dark and inactive, auto processing is already in place and the FACT, not the RESULTS, of that is what Sync (etc) will then use in latest LR version. When the Auto title becomes bright (an active button) this denotes that you are currently dealing with non-Auto processing.

[hogball]

Thanks much for the detailed explanation.  Very helpful.  It seemed that FACT would be the logical mode of operation but the question arose when I AutoSynced with Auto tone in Basic a large number of pics and some of the images did not get corrected as I expected

[john beardsworth]

Did any of those pictures have smart previews? And have you enabled the preference to Enable Smart Previews Instead of Originals?

The new Auto Tone works as Jim said, but with AutoSync the calculation evaluates the other selected images' smart previews instead of loading the originals. This can cause some small differences, and when you select one of the other selected images the Auto button will be white / enabled.

[hogball]

I didn't have Smart Previews selected but thanks for pointing out that aspect of the way in which Auto Tone works.  I would not have guessed that

[johnrellis]

Thanks much for the detailed explanation.  Very helpful.  It seemed that FACT would be the logical mode of operation but the question arose when I AutoSynced with Auto tone in Basic a large number of pics and some of the images did not get corrected as I expected

By "did not get corrected as I expected", do you mean images changed but not in a way you expected, or do you mean the images didn't change at all?  Please provide more detail.

There are two known issues with applying auto tone to a batch of photos via auto sync, copy/paste, or applying presets.

First, as John Beardsworth indicated, for performance reasons, LR uses lower-resolution versions of the raw photo from the camera raw cache when calculating the new settings, and that can result in "small" differences than if you clicked Auto on each photo individually.  (Somes the differences can be fairly noticeable.) The results can depend on whether 1:1 previews in Library have been built.  See this post by Adobe employee Simon Chen and the subsequent discussion: Auto Tone of a batch of photos gives different results than if you do them one at a time | Photoshop...

Second, LR often fails to update the Library thumbnails until you scroll grid view or the filmstrip to make the thumbnails visible, and even then, it can fail to update the thumbnails.  Worse, if you apply auto tone to a large set of photos and then batch-apply some other develop settings, the subsequent settings could be lost: Lightroom: Applying Auto Tone to a batch of photos loses subsequent develop settings | Photoshop Fam... The workaround is to always do Library > Previews > Build Standard-Sized Previews after batch-applying auto tone.

[hogball]

By "did not get corrected as I expected", do you mean images changed but not in a way you expected, or do you mean the images didn't change at all?  Please provide more detail.

It seemed that exposure wasn't corrected on some photos as much as I expected. These were close in shots with a lot of ambient light in a kitchen.  I thought a batch application of Auto tone may have been the cause.    I will try importing a copy of the original and Auto tone it without Sync and see if there is a difference.

One item to note is that I am using JPEG files forma Sony Alpha 77 M2 rather than RAW. 

Thanks for the links regarding the other known issues.  I'll check these out