Levels vs auto tone

Is there a way to set auto tone to work like a modest levels adjustment? I simply can't use auto tone for anything and I am having to apply my levels adjustment by editing in Photoshop. There has to be a better way to do this. thanks

It's also possible to create custom develop presets for just 'auto shadows' (black level) and/or 'auto exposure' (white level). I find this much better and more useful than the full predefined 'Auto Tone' preset (which also adjusts contrast and brightness and very often produces an image I find is way too bright).
RJP

Similar Messages

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.

Cannot disable Auto Tone on import of PSD files - ruins edits !!

Hi - I am a LR 5 expert and we have an issue with the latest release that I need to overcome or it is unusable.    Please direct this to an expert level support person as I have already networked around and have not been able to resolve this issue.    The issue is consistent with other users as well - we have tried this on several computers and the result is the same.     It is possible that is pilot error but I doubt it - we have disabled apply auto tone everywhere we could find it...
I believe this is a serious bug in the way LR handles files on import - and I am also hoping there is an immediate work-around as the issue has TRIPLED our workflow time.
Example #1   -   Edit DNG - Export as PSD with "add to catalog" checked - LR exports the file and then imports the PSD,   but in doing so applies auto tone and destroys all the edits. The re-imported images are too bright and too contrasty.       Auto tone on import IS disabled.
We tried to work around the issue by trying to edit outside LR and re-importing but that does not work either -SAME RESULT !
Example #2 -   Edit DNG files, export to PSD, do not check "add to catalog" - make the edits needed in Photoshop, then import using "add" and LR applies Auto Tone once again destroying all edits.      You can actually watch the auto tone being applied to the thumbs as it imports them. - they get brighter.
In all cases the edited images end up too bright and too contrasty and are otherwise unusable.        Our workaround is to export to PSD, edit in photoshop, then use Photoshop's   scripts to produce the final images and leave the PSD files out of the catalog - this has added a TON of time to our workflow and has corrupted our file management - UNACCEPTABLE !!
We have also tried reading the external meta data option - same result - bright files.
Please let us know how we completely disable auto tone on import and fix this issue it is a deal breaker for using this version.   We are using LR 5.6
Thanks, Mark
Head Janitor, 6IXGUN.COM

Looks like we solved our own problem -   either edit or delete the preferences files and restart lightroom. If you delete it, it will of course wipe our your template settings, etc but that was far less of a hassle than not being able to use LR with PSD / exporting. We were able to make a simple edit and it was fixed.   Also make sure you have unchecked "apply auto tone" in the >preferences>presets   dialog box - we did not have it checked but it WAS enabled in the plist file.       I would definitely consider this a bug - the issue was not present in the last version of LR, it was introduced upon installing 5.6.

Photoshop CC Acting Up - Won't let me crop - auto tone, etc...

For some reason my photoshop has started acting up. When I open any tiff files now it won't let me crop it until I unlock the layer. When I unlock the layer it will let me crop it once, but no further. After selecting all I used to be able to nudge in a direction and click crop to crop it... Also it won't let me do the Auto Tone or other commands if the layer is locked...
It used to be that all the photo's used to be imported without being locked and I used to be able to crop and auto tone and everything as I pleased. I don't know what's happened....

I don't know what to provide? It was working fine before... It didn't use to lock the layer when opening any file, and now it does, it used to let me crop normally, now it won't let me crop at all. Some of the settings got messed up while I was working on a project earlier yesterday. It was a project where I was taking out people from one scene and putting them in another. I played around with layers and other settings. Maybe I hit a wrong command or something but now it defaulted to locking all layers all the time and not letting me do levels or any other things until I unlock every single photo when opening and after that it STILL won't let me crop. When I select and crop it stays the same, doesn't crop the rest of the photo out.
Also when I open it up, it opens it in Layers now, it used to open it in the History tab. All of this is extremely annoying and it happens both in PS 2014 and CC 64 Bit
Is there a way to export a log to all changes I have made, or revert to the way it was before yesterday?
Don't know if it's relevant but I am using a Sony Vaio Z with 97% Adobe RGB on the LED screen, it has 8gb of ram, full quad core i7 t 2.10GHZ, Win 7 64 bit...I don't know how to extract photoshop setting or profiles to show you....

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Can I Create An Auto Tone Plus Half Stop Preset?

In Lightroom 2+ I really love the new Auto Tone, it gets me much closer, much faster. However, I'm wondering if there is anyway to (probably with a text editor) create a preset like do Auto Tone and then add .25 exposure.
Should I be looking at a different feature? Can I somehow apply the history of one image to another?
Thanks!
Justin

Select all images in the grid, hit autotone, then hit the small right arrow in quick develop.

Applying a preset after Auto Tone

When I import a large batch of photographs (2000+) I want to firstly run Auto Tone to get the exposure in the right ball park. Once this is done, I want to apply my own preset. This adjusts most of the settings, EXCEPT exposure which I want to retain from the Auto Tone step. However, this does not work as expected. If I apply the preset with all images selected it seems to process the request, but when I check images individually it does not make the changes! Similarly, if I apply the preset to a single image and then use sync to apply this to all of the other images it does not update the other images with the same settings. Grrrrrr! If I apply the preset to individual images then it does work, but obviously with 2000+ images this isn't really an option..
Has anyone experienced this before? Is there a bug with using user presets on top of Auto Tone?
(As a side note, I've tried running the user preset without first running Auto Tone - it works perfectly as expected. So is there some sort of a glitch with running a preset after Auto Tone?)

When you are applying the Preset are you using the Auto Sync feature. See the screen shot. Hint, if you turn this on make sure you turn it off after you are finished.

Camera RAW auto tone settings applied to jpegs

I posted this in the Windows Bridge forum, but a camera raw preference controls this so I am also posting here.
On jpeg files without any RAW setting applied, Bridge still applies RAW settings to the thumbnails and the preview are thus display incorrectly. Opening the file shows the jpeg as it should be, without RAW settings applied.
I have RAW preferences set to apply auto settings to RAW files without any current settings.
I have my RAW settings to open jpegs in RAW *only* when they already have settings. If I set this to disable jpeg support, then the RAW settings are not automatically applied to jpegs without existing settings. aka, Bridge redoes the thumbnails without the auto setting.
While it is correct to apply auto tone to RAW files without settings, jpeg files are already "developed/printed" and should not get additional auto develop settings automatically applied.
My Bridge is 4.0.4.2
Raw is 6.3
-Norman

I posted this in the Windows Bridge forum, but a camera raw preference controls this so I am also posting here.
On jpeg files without any RAW setting applied, Bridge still applies RAW settings to the thumbnails and the preview are thus display incorrectly. Opening the file shows the jpeg as it should be, without RAW settings applied.
I have RAW preferences set to apply auto settings to RAW files without any current settings.
I have my RAW settings to open jpegs in RAW *only* when they already have settings. If I set this to disable jpeg support, then the RAW settings are not automatically applied to jpegs without existing settings. aka, Bridge redoes the thumbnails without the auto setting.
While it is correct to apply auto tone to RAW files without settings, jpeg files are already "developed/printed" and should not get additional auto develop settings automatically applied.
My Bridge is 4.0.4.2
Raw is 6.3
-Norman

Levels vs auto tone

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