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Question

LR4 auto tone continues to be a disaster?

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
March 7, 2012
12 replies
58788 views

How is it that Photoshop's auto tone can produce such pleasing results, yet Lightroom's auto tone can be so wildly off the mark? This is not a recent LR4 thing, it's been a problem ever since Lightroom was released 6 years ago and Photoshop's auto tone has worked well as far back as I can remember. It just baffles me that this feature of LR still hasn't been fixed in this latest release. Lightroom's auto tone feature, as it stands, is essentially useless and I see many people posting similar experiences. It's erratic too... sometimes setting exposure wildly too high, other times wildly too low. It seems it's biggest problem is in setting exposure. All I ask for is an auto tone that behaves like Photoshop because I don't have time to manually tweak all of my photos.

Any insights on why this behaviour might be?

Does anyone have any suggestions? I saw a few people suggesting manually tweaking the text of the preset (e.g. turn off auto exposure).

I trust I'm not alone in this frustration?

Does anyone have experience with Aperture?

I realize there can never be a magic "fix any photo" button, but it would be so helpful if Lightroom could at least give me a good starting point. As it stands, I have to manually adjust every photo, which is fine for my favourite shots, but way too time consuming to perform on the rest (either I do that or I edit in Photoshop, which kind of defeats the purpose of having Lightroom in the first place).

cheers

This topic has been closed for replies.

areohbee

Legend

Are there any improvements noticeable in Lr5.2?

ref: http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom_5_2_auto_exposure_has_been_improved_to_be_more_consistent_across_images_and_across_different_image_sizes

C

ChrisJoyce

Participating Frequently

I gotta tell ya, it's not bad. I will be giving it a real test soon though. I am double checking the code in my preset that I will be using.

It's been a long time coming!

Chris Joyce

areohbee

Legend

I agree Chris, it seems a lot better to me too.

(I'll have to rethink OttoToner at this point...).

Anybody else??

areohbee

Legend

This plugin solves most problems with Lr's auto-toning, granted it is more cumbersome to use than native.

OttoTone

A

Anonymous

I'm having the same problem. Auto Tone often massively over exposes, or under exposes. It is completely unreliable. The 2010 process was much better. The first image is as shot. 2nd image is 2012 process "auto tone". 3rd image is 2010 process "auto tone". This is a pretty mild sample.

S

Steven Bodnar

Participating Frequently

It underexposes with small but bright highlights. The bright light through the trees, just above the girl's head impacts the auto-tone. The approach is auto-tone and double click on Exposure to reset and potentially contrast as well.

A

Anonymous

Does LR5 auto tone do a better job?

areohbee

Legend

Is auto-tone any better in Lr4.2RC1?

(I've heard that it is, but I can't tell yet)

BKKDon

Inspiring

I guess all I can say is that the "Exposure" Auto Tone is still not good but the great thing about Auto Tone now is that you can trust the Contrast/Highlights/Shadows/Whites/Blacks and then adjust the Exposure to your liking.

areohbee

Legend

Ditto.

Exposure calculation seems no better/different to me in Lr4.2RC1.

It's strange how so much of the time the other values for things are reasonable whilst exposure is outlandish... - oh well.

Cheers,

Rob

areohbee

Legend

More auto-tone observations:

* I've yet to see contrast outside the range -25 to +25, nor highlights outside the range 0 to -50 nor shadows outside the range 0 to +50 (highlights/shadows values always mirroring one another symmetrically, as previously noted).

* I've seen -blacks & +whites all over the map, and exposure of course.

* I don't recall ever seeing any large +blacks or -whites values - always very small values.

All of this seems fairly reasonable to me - just wondering if my observations are consistent with other users.

Anybody else?

Rob

BKKDon

Inspiring

Hi,

Yes I agree with you I haven't seen any excessive values, I did run a test on a bracketed series -2EV, 0EV and +2EV and it actually seemed to do a fairly good job but the exposure values were out by about 0.40. For example the underexposed used +1.55, middle -0.4 and the overexposed -2.6 but the histograms were amazingly similar.

When I adjusted the exposure to +2, 0 and -2 the other Auto Tone settings seemed to be OK.

Almost as if the Auto Tone assumes you "Expose to the right" ... maybe it does?

Don.

areohbee

Legend

Just saw a new record (since I've been paying attention) for highest +blacks value: +26.

(but it was appropriate for the photo).

BKKDon wrote:
Almost as if the Auto Tone assumes you "Expose to the right" ... maybe it does?

It had better not (and I doubt it makes that assumption).

R

areohbee

Legend

How to edit a photo in Lr4, the quickest way:

================================

1. Click Auto.

2. Adjust Exposure (left or right).

3. Adjust Blacks (left).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Explanation:

* Often, exposure is off.

* Sometimes, more black clipping is desirable.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Fine tuning requires PV2012 editing skills and some time.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Note: If this "procedure" doesn't cut it, please do tell. No improvement will come unless Adobe knows what to do. More specifically, do any settings other than exposure (and blacks) seem to be off much, in your opinion?

In my opinion, Lr4 auto-tone does what it's intended to do pretty good, e.g. compared to Lr3, except for a larger variance in exposure (in Lr3, brightness and/or exposure was off a lot too, just less of a swing, right?) and I think it's too shy with the -blacks sometimes too.

Bottom line: Lr4 auto-tone is a very useful tool, once you accept that you need the most basic of editing skills to go with it: exposure adjustment (and blacks).

I know some folks want "Auto" to be 100% automatic - and I agree, some improvements are in order, but @now, it is what it is, and I hate to see folks throwing out the baby with the bath water...

PS - I think ssprengel pretty much nailed where the tendency toward underexposure comes from, but what about the overexposure?

Cheers,

Rob

C

CSS_Simon

Participating Frequently

Rob Cole wrote:
How to edit a photo in Lr4, the quickest way:
================================
1. Click Auto.
2. Adjust Exposure (left or right).
3. Adjust Blacks (left).

Or even just steps 1 and 2.

I find auto rarely gives an optimum exposure; it often alters exposure much more than I think is right. However, auto plus exposure adjustment is often a good starting point.

areohbee

Legend

CSS Simon wrote:
Or even just steps 1 and 2.
I find auto rarely gives an optimum exposure; it often alters exposure much more than I think is right. However, auto plus exposure adjustment is often a good starting point.

Indeed. Adjust blacks leftward, or in some cases: right-ward (after auto-toning) only if it suits you (and the image) - exposure is the biggie... With just these 2 (or 3) things, it's not only a good starting point, but may be a good finishing point too .

areohbee

Legend

Here's another option - percent auto-toning.

You edit as best you can without auto-toning, then you click to move your photo(s) a fraction of the way toward the auto-tone settings. If you like what you see, click again...

Cookmarks (photo adjustment links -> basics -> auto tone)

Rob

C

ChrisJoyce

Participating Frequently

I've been watching this to see what develops.

My experience, mostly events, is the auto tone is now a do not touch button. It was a huge time saver.

I loved the high 'hit rate' of auto before. Now, every stinking image needs to be put through a deep dive.

Frustrating... not advancement in my opinion.

Chris

areohbee

Legend

Chris,

I never used Auto-tone in the earliest days of Lr4, but recently I've been using it a lot in Lr4.1.

Although the initial result may make you want to hurl, after a (potentially large) adjustment of exposure, and a proper setting for blacks, the result is often quite good. Maybe a tweak to contrast for taste, and good to go. Granted, some photos will also need fine tuning of highlights/shadows.

Auto-tone'd value for whites seems pretty darn good most of the time, although I would not consider it off-limits for a tweak, if ultimate optimization is your aim, and you know what to do with it, e.g. sometimes a little attenuation suits my taste (gentle nudge leftward) when it has a relatively large positive value.

Rob

C

ChrisJoyce

Participating Frequently

Thanks for the reply.

You have confirmed my finding...... They took the AUTO out of Auto Tone.

You are basically HAND toning each photo. I am looking for time savings. ($$$)

LR3 is the Gold Standard for this Feature. Maybe it will be given a complete rework but they will have to change the development team since this group had their chance and well..... it needs a team that was familiar with LR3.

Chris

J

JohnMBStewart

Participant

I too have experienced similar problems since upgrading to LR4 (currently on 4.1RC) which is seriously impacting the time it is taking to process photos.

My workflow is typically as follows:

1) Create a new catalogue for the event

2) Import RAW images (typically from 500 - 2500). In LR3 I used to apply auto-tone as a preset on import. It wasn't perfect, but got most shots close enough.

3) Quickly go through all the images, selecting and rejecting photos as required.

4) Delete rejected shots from catalogue and disk

5) Tweak remaining shots with sliders, normally doesn't need much (if any) tweaking to be acceptable for web gallery upload.

6) Export photos for web upload.

7) Fine tune purchased images before delivery to customer.

With LR4, when auto tone is applied, in the majority of cases it reduces the exposure by up to 2.5 stops and sets contrast to -25. This results in an unusable image, so have to set exposure and contrast to zero, and work manually from there.

Here is one of the worst examples I've come across:

1) Original image with no processing at all

2) Auto tone applied in LR3

3) Auto tone applied in LR4

4) Manual tweaking of develop sliders in LR4

I would expect a similar image to the final one above by tweaking the sliders in LR3 as my workflow step 7.

Previously, I would have to "tweak" about 1 in 10 shots after applying auto tone adjustment in LR3 before upload to my web gallery, but in LR4 it's probably around 90 - 95% that I have to tweak manually.

The extra workload means it is now taking anywhere from 2 to 5 times as long to process a batch of images.

John

L

l gt l

Participant

Similar to the comments above and John's examples, I have to almost exclude autotone from my workflow as the results are almost always 1-2 stops underexposed. An example:

Original image

Process 2012 Auto Tone

Process 2010 Auto Tone

Waiting on some fix, Adobe. Lightroom 4 is otherwise a great product, but without a fix, probably wouldn't recommend anyone purchasing/upgrading.

ssprengel

Inspiring

I agree Bob, I'm often confused by the auto tone's selection of postive white point and highlight values on images that already have pure white or bright zones that if anything I'd think needed toning down. I just used your method on a handful of images that rendered really great results but it's a three step process per file. In LR3 I used to drag my exposure slider down untill all my critical highlights were on the histogram then boost brightness, fill, contrast, and add a custom tonecurve to get dimension back in it.

LR4 - Let me show you a perplexing auto tone example from my recent wedding - Both images were originally exposed exactly the same, have almost the same composition yet auto tone gave me dramatically different results and I'm just scratching my head at why.

The difference in Wes’s wedding photos is the location of the three bright areas: In the one that is too dark, the candles’ reflection, the light-behind-the-curtain, and the top of the bride’s dress are all closer to the center, a little, than the one that seems ok, and were deemed the subject, so everything else had to be darkened significantly for them to show their full detail. Apparently these bright areas are being ignored in the one where the autotoning is mostly ok because they are closer to the edges or perhaps because the lights-behind-the-curtain has a significant black area to the right which gives the lights-behind-the-curtain subject status.

Without looking at others’ methods that work for them, what I usually do, is do Auto Tone, then undo the negative Exposure adjustment, then crank the Highlights all the way down to -100. This compresses the highlights, stretches the contrast, but leaves the overall camera exposure, intact, and then I tweak from there. Obviously the camera manufactures only have one EV parameter to optimize in their metering so they get it right more often that Auto-PV2012 toning, which has several parameters to worry about.

C

CSS_Simon

Participating Frequently

I think Photoshop CS5 Auto Tone is a fairly straight forward operation to stretch the tonal range to go from 0 to 255. From the help:

The Auto option for Levels and Curves and the Auto Tone command automatically adjust the black point and white point in an image. This clips a portion of the shadows and highlights in each channel and maps the lightest and darkest pixels in each color channel to pure white (level 255) and pure black (level 0). The intermediate pixel values are redistributed proportionately. As a result, using the Auto option or Auto Tone increases the contrast in an image because the pixel values are expanded. Because the Auto option and Auto Tone adjust each color channel individually, it may remove color or introduce color casts.

I assume LR does something more complex - perhaps Eric can explain the difference?

PS - If I understand correctly the above description for the CS5 function then it's very easy to achieve in LR4: simply drag the ends of the linear tone curve in until they meet the ends of the histogram.

D

DirgleAuthor

Participating Frequently

I think Photoshop CS5 Auto Tone is a fairly straight forward operation to stretch the tonal range to go from 0 to 255. From the help:

Yes, that was what I assumed as well. The question remains though, if LR does in fact uses a more complex algorithm, why do I seem to find the results so frequently less useful? Is there a way to replicate the Photoshop behaviour in Lightroom? I tried tweaking the text of an "auto tone" preset, but didn't have any luck (e.g. just enabling auto contrast and brightness).

cheers

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