gannon.johnc wrote We can argue about the artistic value of over/under clipping and contrast / dynamic range. But, an image that uses 100% of the range is the best place to start editing. The LR Process Version 3, 4, and 5 Tone controls are "image adaptive," which causes them to interact with each other. Adjusting them in a top-down workflow (just as Adobe has organized) them provides the fastest method of achieving the desired toning. More here: Tone Control Adjustment Procedure gannon.johnc wrote Why can't they automate the white and black clipping (shift double click on <white, black>) on import or for for all selected images? As stated above setting the White and Black clipping controls FIRST is only useful if you leave all of the other controls at their default settings. As soon as you apply the Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, and Shadows settings the White and Black clipping points will change and sometimes very drastically! I've also noticed that SHIFT double-click on the Whites and Blacks controls can produce extreme wrong settings. For example with a dark underexposed image that has very bright clipped highlights the Whites control will go negative and often to -100. You know that's not the optimum value because once you apply the very needed -Highlights and +Shadows those SHIFT double-click clipping point settings will change significantly! However, they will still be incorrect settings because this method of setting them uses no intelligence (Your Brain or Sensei Ai). As 99jon mentions, "For blacks and whites I always press the Alt (Optn) key when using the sliders to get the optimum setting at the point of clipping." For the example I just described above you want to adjust those fully clipped highlights so that they appear fully clipped in the Alt (Optn) key preview. That's reality because there's no recovering fully RGB channel clipped raw data! Setting Whites to the lower SHIFT double-click value will simply make the unclipped highlights appear darker and less natural. Your other option is to use the Auto function after Import. Unfortunately, batch applying Auto Settings uses a lower resolution camera raw cache data at the link 99jon mentions, which can produce less than optimum results. You'll need to apply the Auto Settings function to each image file individually to get the best results. I've created two 'Idea' posts in the Photoshop Family forum to improve both Auto and Manual Settings rendering with batch application. Please add your 'Me To' vote, 'Follow,' and any comments at the below two posts. Thank you! Option To Batch Apply Auto Settings With Full-Resolution Image Data | Photoshop Family Customer Community The following post was originally intended to "fix an issue when using Auto Settings with fisheye lens images that have unexposed black frame areas. However, the center-weighted concept has the added benefit of improving the accuracy of Auto Settings calculations with normal image files. This is similar to center-weighted and evaluative exposure metering that all current cameras use, but targets ALL of the LR Tone control settings. Center-Weighted Option for Auto and Manual Tone Settings | Photoshop Family Customer Community
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