Auto Tone Rectangle Tool

In a previous thread I suggested improving Auto Tone by making it respect the crop: http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.3bc3c985/3
That feature would be a good compromise between usability (pretty good) and easy of development for Adobe (no changes to UI, documentation, etc).
However, if Adobe wanted to go whole hog and increase the development effort to make Auto Tone really zing, this is what it should do:
The Tone Curve pane has a target icon in the upper left of the pane that enables a tool that lets you click on a pixel and adjust the tone curve. A similar tool should be introduced into the Tone pane that lets the user click and drag to draw a rectangle on the image to specify what area should be analyzed for Auto Tone. As soon as the user releases the click and drag, the rectangle would disappear, Auto Tone would calculate auto tone settings based on the pixels that were in rectangle and then apply those settings to the entire image. This tool would enable the incredibly fast tone adjustment workflow of:
1. Click-drag a rectangle and release. (Rectangle disappears, Auto Tone analyzes the pixels in the rectangle and applies that tone setting to the entire image.)
2. Right arrow to select next image.
1. Click-drag a rectangle and release.
2. Right arrow to select next image.
1. Click-drag a rectangle and release.
2. Right arrow to select next image.
etc.
That would be very powerful and very fast.
Thoughts anyone?

If that were implemented, I might actually use 'Auto Tone' for the first time...
Right now, for most images, it's useless b/c typically I don't want to 'Auto-Tone' the entire image... rather, just a part of it.
-Rishi

Similar Messages

How can I change the frame around a title created with the Rectangle Tool?

In PrE 7, I have been creating titles (e.g.: Title > New Title > Default Still, etc.) for a long time and using the many ways to manipulate the text (type, color, size, animation, etc.). Today, I tried to use the Rectangle Tool (or the Ellipse Tool, or the Line Tool) and they created a beautiful 'frame' (like a picture frame: artistically designed and colored) and I can change the background color within the frame and place any text (also background picture, etc.) in it. However, I couldn't find any way to change the 'frame' or the general style of these title objects. Is there any way to do this, or this is the only design that can be created with these tools? I would greatly appreciate any help (couldn't find any in this u2u site). Thanks, Laci.

Laci,
Yes, you can apply Styles to several Rectangles (or other Shapes), to simulate a "frame." The Styles should appear as Text in the Styles Panel. Since you are working with Shapes, but viewing the Styles applied to Text, it is not perfectly intuitive as to what those Styles look like with the Shapes.
Personally, I find that doing things like "frames" in Photoshop and then Importing the PSD's into PrE is far, far easier. In that case, I would place the PSD on Video Track 1 (unless I wanted it to appear superimposed over my Video (like a PiP), and then do the text in a PrE Title, and place it above the PSD.
Here is an example:
This is a simple "picture frame" created in PS. I used a still image, instead of text in this case. These could be "wood-grained," "granite," etc.
Much more control and tons of Effects and Filters that can be applied.
Good luck,
Hunt
PS - that is from PrPro, so the GUI will look quite different, but things work the same way.

Bridge CS6 How to turn off auto tone adjustment for the loupe?

Adobe Bridge CS6. 'Apply auto tone adjustments' is unchecked in Camera Raw Preferences. Yet every time I click on an image in the preview panel it does a tonal adjustment before it magnifies the image detail. I am viewing bracketed images and do not want any auto tone applied at any time while previewing images. How can I turn off all auto tone adjustment for the program - including the loupe. I never had this issue in a previous version. I'm on PC. Thanks for any help!

All 4 Default Image Settings are unchecked. Checking this further I have found this is only a visual issue in Bridge Preview. I have opened the same raw file before any adjustment had taken place (w/o using the loupe magnifier) in PS CS6 - and then again opened it after using the magnifier which did an auto contrast adjust on the image. Both files are the same in PS CS6. This is only a visual issue within Bridge (Master Collection CS6) on my Win7 64 bit machine. No issue with a standalone PS CS6 version on my XP 64 bit system.
There is no auto adjustment of the image until I use the loupe (magnifier tool).
Note my previous comment as to what happens when I use it. Thanks!
I have a feeling this is a bug. I have a Photography help group on fb and posed this question to them. I had mostly no issue responses but got this from another person. I checked after reading this and it is the same issue with me - this only happens with raw files, not jpeg. Here is his comment line.
Carl, I see what you mean, I have tried several adjustments to the preferences and none seem to work. The image automatically adjusts after a brief time. There does not seem to be any way to turn off the adjustment. I'm using Bridge CS 6 on a Mac. I don't think it has anything to do with camera calibration, but it only happens when using RAW files. I tried it on JPGs and TIFFs and it did not adjust the loupe image. Wonder what Adobe has to say
So - tThanks for any thoughts! So at least it's not going to be an editing issue - but it's a pain here. I use Bridge to edit my shoots and I often shoot bracketed images. While I cull images according to the histogram, I also do visual assessment and I can't have Bridge doing it's own thing on tonal adjustment.

LIghtroom Auto Tone Too Dark and Loses Detail

Hi,
I'm new to Lightroom so excuse my ignorance if I use the wrong terminology or ask a question that has a relatively easy answer I somehow overlooked inside of Lightroom.
I take photos at my son's soccer games and frequently walk away with over 200 photos to adjust, crop, etc. after removing the poor composition, out of focus and other shots. One of the features that prompted me to purchase Lightroom to replace my existing tool (Capture One LE) was the way Lightroom handled colors in the Auto Tone preset. Photos auto adjusted in Lightroom with the Auto Tone feature exhibit a much more rich/vibrant color than the ones that would come out of Capture One LE for me.
However, I've noticed that Auto Tone also darkens areas of the photo to the point where a significant amount of detail is lost. For example, a shot of a player head on with a shadow across his face and front of his jersey loses facial detail around the eyes, nose, mouth and folds in the front of the jersey because the coloring is darkened to the point where the highlights are lost.
I've tried several adjustments to regain the highlights and associated detail, but am unsure if there's a better way to recover the detail (or gain the tone enhancements without losing the detail). So far, the adjustments I've tried to regain the detail have caused the colors to wash out somewhat and reduce the benefit gained with the color enhancements of Auto Tone.
Is there a better way of regaining the detail after using Auto Tone? And on a related note, is there a way to "undo" just the Auto Tone adjustment in a photo if it's not the last adjustment made, or does one need to step backward through the adjusments undoing each adjustment in order to get to the Auto Tone adjustment in order to remove it?
Thanks in advance for any direction or suggestions anyone can provide. FYI, my photos were all in RAW format (noticed a lot of other posts referring to LR Auto Tone washing out JPGs, but this isn't my issue), with a Canon 20D.
Dale

There are several ways to go, here, as always with Lightroom in this situation. I suppose one thing you can do is use Auto Tone as you've been doing, and then back down another slider or two, particularly Contrast and Brightness, that moves too far for your taste when you hit Auto Tone.
I don't use Auto Tone. It's considered a machete where deftly-wielded surgical knives get much better results. I tested Auto Tone out on a virtual copy of one of my photos of people for you to see what happens. It bumps Contrast way up, drops Brightness a bit, reduces Fill Light, and increases Blacks slightly. Yeah, that would pretty much get the results you're complaining about! Might work okay in some landscape shots in some very subdued lighting situations, but it will make family shots too harsh.
Let me suggest another approach. First, no one checklist approach like I'm about to suggest works for every photo. But when you learn how to use the sliders yourself, and not rely on the automatic and strongest ones, like Auto Tone and Contrast, your photos will look better than you even realized. Seriously! I know what you're saying:
I take 200 photos at a time, and I don't have time to play with sliders for each photo. Hear me out, though, because you do. Once you get the hang of it, you'll learn to do all this so fast, well less than one minute per keeper shot, and you'll see that it's worth the small amount of time it takes.
First look at all your Imported shots and quickly weed out most of them. Don't try to save the ones where your main subject is out-of-focus or turned away at the last second, or badly overexposed shots, or for whatever reason, aren't worth editing time because you know you have better ones... and you should weed out MOST shots (maybe at least 150) if you took 200! Be a tough editor! Hit the X key as you look at ones to cull, then click Filter by black flag until all the Rejected photos Only are isolated, check them one more time to be sure you didn't X some you want by mistake, ctrl-A them to highlight all the Rejected ones ONLY, and hit Delete to blow them all away, From Disk. Congratulate yourself, because you just saved a lot of editing time.
Assuming the Exposure was in the right ballpark, fix Color Temp first. For your first keeper shot, move that Temp slider near upper right of Develop, almost certainly to the right for Canon Raw shots, to warm the faces a bit. You probably don't want the kids' faces ruddy red, but a little warming so that white jerseys just begin to go slightly to the red side of white, makes your outdoor people photos glow. It wouldn't be surprising to see family soccer photos in the 6000-6500 range look best. If you want cold journalistic realism, leave white jerseys pure white and Temp down in the 4000-5000 range on a cloudy day or 5000-6000 range on a sunny one. Now, if one shot's right, and
if your light didn't change during the shoot (sun going in and out of clouds, sun setting, field lights turning on halfway through the game), you can fix Temp for all your remaining shots with just a couple of clicks! Leave the first shot you fixed Temp for highlighted, and ctrl-A the whole filmstrip (or, alternatively, you can just ctrl-click the ones taken in the same light). Now click the Sync button that appears near the lower right corner of Develop. A window pops. Make sure White Balance is checked, and click Synchronize. (Every field checked here gets applied the same as on the first highlighted shot to all your subsequently highlighted shots when you do this. Since you haven't changed anything else yet, you don't have to uncheck the other boxes-- it won't matter. But later, after you've made other adjustments to other shots, you might only want to leave the boxes checked for fields you do want applied the same to all highlighted photos.) When you click Synchronize, watch all the highlighted photos in the filmstrip at the bottom get a warmer color balance. You can always later make more refined adjustments to individual shots or groups of shots that go too red or not warm enough.
The next thing to fix is the Exposure. Get in the habit of constantly consulting that Histogram graph at the top of the right column. Ideally, though this isn't always possible or ideal, but generally, you'd like to see neither triangle in the upper right and left corners
lit. (When it's right, you'll still see the outline of the triangle, but it won't be illuminated.) Even better, for an average outdoor shot with a variety of light and dark tones, you want to see a nice balanced line across most of the graph, curving up from the left and down on the right. Not always possible or the best exposure for every shot, mind you, just average ones. (A silhouette shot on a beach with the setting sun in the photo is an example of a shot where the best Histogram will look the opposite of that!) Try moving Exposure slowly to the left and right and watch how the Histogram moves. Try to get the best average placement you can, and see if the photo still looks right.
Or watch your grass with soccer shots while you move Exposure back and forth. Grass should look middle green, not too bright, and not dull-muddy-dark. Or watch faces. If you still have a triangle on the upper right of Histogram, which means highlight detail is blowing out, try sliding Recovery to the right just until the upper right triangle disappears, if possible. (It isn't always possible, even with Recovery at 100.) If you still have a triangle on the upper left of Histogram (that one means shadows are muddy with no detail), try sliding Blacks down from 5 towards 0, just until the triangle goes away. Sometimes it's easier to make a triangle go away by moving Exposure a bit. If there's no triangle on the upper left, try increasing Black slowly just until one appears in the upper left, then back off a bit until it just goes away again. If there are harsh shadows, increase Fill Light to brighten shadows a bit until it looks right. Losing the triangles is a general goal but not as important as having photos look right to you. It's a juggling act. Sometimes when you remove the triangles, the grass is muddy brownish, faces look wrong, or highlights are too dull. Maybe you move Exposure, Highlights or Blacks to put one or both triangles back but leave the overall photo better.
Now just do two more things, especially as you're learning this: first, increase Clarity. Probably a bunch. If faces go too harsh on you with Clarity at a highsetting, and they can in closeup, you may want about a 20-45 on Clarity. Many photos look best with even higher Clarity settings, even 100 for landscapes. Now bump Vibrance up, probably to the left of the Clarity slider, though. Too high a setting on Vibrance makes colors looks cartoonish and fake. Are faces too ruddy or foliage too over-the-top? Back off on Vibrance.
Look at the Histogram one more time and touch up Recovery and Blacks again if needed to get rid of barely reappearing triangles.
I recommend you do not move the following sliders, generally, for 99% of your photos, anyway: Tint (just usually not needed if the camera is doing color balance correctly), and Brightness, Contrast, and Saturation, all of which are ham-handed ways of doing what you do more precisely with the other sliders. About the only time you need Saturation is to move it left with a rare shot that for some reason has too much color especially red even with Vibrance set to 0. (Maybe your camera is set to Vivid.)
Doing these things will make most of your photos look WAY better than hitting Auto Tone. And once you get the hang of it, as I said, you can do each photo in well less than one minute, and you only do this on your keepers, so it doesn't take much time.

What's up with auto tone?

What's up with auto tone? It doesn't seem very smart or useful. It always blows out the exposure for me, midtones in particular. I do have a hardware calibrated NEC SV monitor. I would much rather Adobe bring over the algorithims for auto contrast, auto levels, and auto color from PS, which, when faded to varying degrees using different blending methods (normal, color, and luminosity in particular), are incredibly powerful and useful.
Auto tone seems to have been broken from day one and hasn't gotten much better. I sometimes use it as a reference, then undo it and manually move somewhat in the direction it's suggesting, but it seems really out of whack in general.

One of the first things I learnt in a PSE class years ago was: Never use auto adjustments, they'll ruin your picture ...
Since then, I rarely ever use any of these auto tuning features in any pricture editing software
I would go so far as to say that is extremely bad advice. The trio of 'auto' functions in PS are among the most powerful and useful in the entire program. They can be used in concert with each other, and each one faded to varying degrees - which they very often should be - and changing the type of blending when fading is very powerful. They can adversely affect image quality if used carelessly, by no means will ruin your photos de facto. Like any tool, they have to be used wisely. I've color corrected probably 100k photos over 18 years with PS and for me these tools are absolutely critical.

Bulk Auto tone only in library?

Tried to automatically set all selected images to auto tone in develop module. But it seems that only works in library module.
Auto tone setting is not available in the sync menu! Why is that?

Yeah, it's fair enough once in a while!
Ever since Auto Sync was introduced, I've thought it was one of the best and most timesaving features of LR, and I am surprised it isn't pushed more. After all, it's vastly more efficient than the do-it-then-sync-it two step, or the competition's fiddly lift and stamp palette. So I work in this mode all the time. If you forget you've multiple items selected, and adjust them accidentally, you soon learn (or are too slow witted to benefit from the tool anyway).
John

Is there a way to make a preset that makes Auto Tone behave the way it did in the beta?

Yes, I'm probably the only person on the planet that wants this, but I liked how the Auto Tone auto adjusted the Exposure slider (ONLY!) and left all the other sliders at zero in the Lightroom 4 beta.
Is there a way to write a preset that returns that behavior?

No, but try shift-double-click on the word "Exposure".

Why does Auto Tone button in Quick Develop panel fail with Win 7 platform?

I have been a user of Photoshop since the inception of Photoshop CS. I recently purchased a subscription to Photoshop CC, which comes with Photoshop Lightroom 5.
I have never used Lightroom, so I purchased the Kindle version of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5, CLASSROOM IN A BOOK. I have this eBook installed on the same Windows 7 PC that I have Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5 installed on.
I ran into a problem in a section of the first chapter titled “Using Quick Develop in the Library module.” This section, in part, instructs how to quickly improve the color tonal balance of an image.
After selecting the required image from the sample images for this lesson, I found the histogram in my Lightroom 5 Loupe view to be the same as the lesson’s photo illustration for this original image. As described in the lesson, the photo did not have a balanced tonal distribution.
I followed the lesson’s instruction: “4. In the Quick Develop panel, watch the tone distribution curve shift in the Histogram panel as you click the Auto Tone button. Although the automatic adjustment hasn’t done a perfect job with this particular photo, there is substantial improvement; a lot of image detail has been recovered from the overexposed hair and face and there is more depth in the mid-tones. The contrast, however, remains unimpressive, and the darker areas still look flat.” (See Adobe Creative Team [2013-08-06]. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5: Classroom in a Book [Kindle Locations 1024-1026]. Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.)
This is where I ran into a problem. After clicking on the Auto Tone Button in the Quick Develop panel, my results were completely different than what was described and shown in the Histogram displayed in the lesson. Instead, in my Lightroom 5, clicking the Lightroom Auto Tone button has increased the exposure, making it even more over exposed than the original image! Therefore continuing to follow the instructions in the lesson was a waste of time, since my Auto Tone results were so totally out of sync from that of the lesson.
This disturbed me, so I decided to open the same sample image in Photoshop CC, Camera RAW 8.2. Camera RAW provides an Auto Button which improves exposure and color tonal balance to an image. The results were exactly the same as the Auto Tone functionality in the Quick Develop panel in Lightroom 5. I couldn't understand why the lesson instructor's results were so positive and mine were so disastrous. Then it hit me! I discovered that the lesson writer of this Adobe Classroom in a Book was using Lightroom 5 on a MAC computer. I could tell by looking at his lesson images. Just to be sure, I tried this lesson scenario on a different PC with Win 7, Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5. I got the same failed results.
I’ve heard from other professionals that Photoshop and Lightroom software only work properly on Apple computers. I’ve always thought that this was a myth, but have infrequently experienced a good result using the Auto button feature in Photoshop Camera Raw on a Windows PC platform, so I don’t use it often.
What really has me frustrated is the fact that Adobe no longer has a direct way to report software defects to their tech support or process improvement teams. Their online bug reporting process is woefully inadequate. I've tried twice to create a support ticket on the Adobe site, only to have my case withdrawn mysteriously. I've tried their online chat, telephone support, and sent emails with image attachments to the address provided by their agent on the telephone. My email goes unanswered and my open cases somehow get closed.
Any ideas on how to get this issue addressed by Adobe are sincerely appreciated.

Adobe tries to improve the Auto Tone function from time-to-time. I used to completely underexpose an image that had a few bright spots such as car headlights turned on in an otherwise properly exposed image. This is probably what you’re seeing, LR now guessing brighter more of the time, and it might change, again, in a future version so don’t be too concerned.
As others have said, Auto Tone works on some images and not on others, and Adobe can only try to make it work better on more images by changing how it works on all images. For the lesson example, the author purposely used an image that was improved with auto-tone that LR did at the time of authorship. You will never have a picture exactly like the lesson’s example, either, so it’s not that important if the lesson is 100% accurate for future versions of LR, just that the general idea that some pictures are improved in certain ways by Auto Tone will still be applicable, and you’ll need to learn, by trial and error, what to do when Auto Tone doesn’t work well or the image needs further adjustment. That is the important lesson, what to do with your own pictures.
You can reset a particular slider after a bad Auto Tone by double clicking on that slider. The Exposure slider is the one I reset most often.
You can also LR set the Auto Tone value for just one slider by holding down the Shift key and double clicking on that one slider. I do this a lot for the Blacks slider to set the black point, without messing up everything else.

In Photoshop Elements 12, is there a way to batch process all photos in a file with 'Auto Tone' and save the changes?

In Photoshop Elements 12, is there a way to batch process all photos in a file with 'Auto Tone' and save the changes?

Thank you, that was perfect!
Yoni

Text boxes and rectangle tool issues

When I open a new document and use the text or rectangle tool, the box I create on the screen is angled. I can't get these tools to create a straight box.

To clarify a bit:
Normally, adjusting the Constrain Angle setting does not happen by accident.
But: It used to be a popular gag by colleagues to drive you mad, just for fun …

Can I place a (Rectangle Tool) container filled with an image in an (Accordion) widget and make it clickable?

Is it possible to use the Rectangle Tool to create a container, fill the container with a graphic image, place the container and image in an Accordion widget space and make the container clickable to open and close the Accordion?
I've done this but the container isn't clickable, only the other areas of the Accordion window are. Can this be done?

You can use the image as fill for label of accordion which will open the container on click.
If this does not answer your question then please provide me an example where I can see what exactly you are trying to achieve.
Thanks,
Sanjit

How do you auto tone a group of photos. I selected them all and tried to auto tone but it keeps doing only one

How do you auto tone a group of photos. I tried command a to select all and then auto tone but it only did one Photo. I troes several times and yes all photos were selected

In Develop you can highlight a group of thumbnails in the filmstrip, then right-click and choose Develop Settings -> Auto Tone
In Library you can highlight a group of thumbnails in the Grid and click the Auto Tone button in the Quick Develop area.
What you can’t do is click the Auto button in Develop and have it do more than one photo—this is by design, except, maybe if you have Auto Sync enabled.

Problem with ACR 7 auto tone?

Still trying to get a handle on this beast, playing with various controls. Here's a snapshot with default settings and then after auto is invoked. Default appears ok, just a small bit of clipping, but unless I'm missing something something is wrong with auto.
Richard Southworth

'Auto Tone' is simply not good enough to bother using, IMO. (not a big deal for me, since I prefer to "manual" tone anyway, still...).
PS - I have seen this over-darkening behavior in the past which I believed was due to a single overextended channel, which for reasons I don't understand, was not shown in the Lightroom histogram, but you can see it in the histogram of the Mfr. software.
Rob

Auto tone and auto WB

How often do you use these two features, and do you find them accurate? I have LR5, and I've found that sometimes they work better than others. The auto white balance setting seems to work fairly well most of the time. On the other hand, auto tone can be pretty hit or miss. Many times, it wants to make the photo much too bright.

Auto-WB is usually pretty good.
AutoTone can be rather entertaining. 50/50 chance of it being helpful.
I have my own presets for various shooting conditions.

Rectangle Tool Issues

Im probably overlooking something simple, but when I try to draw a rectangle Flash is automatically applying a corner radius. I've tried resetting the options in the Properties Inspector, which resets to the default, but soon as a draw a shape it goes right back to a random radius. Any Help?
Thanks.

In CS4, both can have rounded corners. Use the Properties tab to adjust (set to 0 for square corners). The primitive rectangle will allow you to make changes after it has been drawn, but with the rectangle tool, you must adjust the settings before it is drawn.

Auto Tone Rectangle Tool

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for