PS's auto and LR's auto work in fundamentally different ways, and have to because the controls and the ability of those controls is completely different.

Imagine looking at nothing but the histogram and using nothing but the LR sliders to adjust your images.  Could you do much better?

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. 

MadManChan2000, I'm going to send you two originals via dropbox from the same sequence taken this afternoon.  In one (DSC_7180.jpg), Auto Tone blows out the tone significantly and I have to pull the exposure back dramatically.  In the other (DSC_7187.jpg), Auto Tone makes the image significantly darker.

Eric,

I agree that, as a starting point, LR4's PV2012 "Auto-tone" is much better than LR3's PV2010.

We are being told that in LR4's (ACR7/PV2012) Develop's “Basic” panel, "Tone" adjustments are designed to be worked from "top down".  Supposedly, this takes advantage of the adaptive "Highlights" capabilities.

Does "Auto-tone" work from the "top down".?

I have been using "Auto" as the 1st step then continue adjustments by image as needed

-  Do you agree with this approach? 

-  Does "Auto-tone" loose PV2012's powerful adaptive "Highlights" and "Shadows" capabilities?

I guess the simple question is “Does "Auto-tone" take advantage of the adaptive "Highlights" of PV2012 while still finding a White & Black point?"

Thanks, Bob

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

"Auto-Toning" with PV2012 is a perplexing dilemma. 

According to Eric Chan, "Auto-Toning" addresses "Basic" Tone sliders from the "Top-down". This takes full advantage of  PV2012 enhanced "adaptive" processing (Jeff Schewe/Tom Knoll). There is no questioning the superior image quality of PV2012, however, using "Auto-Tone" produces inconsistent results. The inconsistencies are hard to predict but on the whole, "Auto-Toning" of the older PV2010 produces better results.

The inset below is a series of thumbnail pairs. The left side of the pair is PV2010 "Auto-Toned" while the right side of the pair is PV2012 "Auto-Toned". (Click the inset to enlarge the image for better evaluation). You'll notice that sometime PV2012 are lighter, sometimes darker but mostly inferior to PV2010.  However, when the subject matter has even mid-tone throughout the scene, the results are the similar.

• Look at the 1st Row:
  • the 1st pair of images has PV2010 Lighter
  • while the 3rd set (with the sky) has the PV2010 darker
    • with both pairs, the PV2010 Auto-Tone is better.
• Look at the 4th Row of images containing the waterfall:
  • The 1st set has the PV2012 a little lighter,
  • the middle set has PV2012 a little darker and
  • the 3rd set has as PV2012 much darker!  WHY?
• Look at the 5th Row containing the red-brick building:
  • the 1st set of images has a slight difference
  • the 3rd set a bigger difference
  • yet the middle pair (with the subject being a large mid-tone area) are similar!

So how are we to proceed? (see my approach below the inset)

First an Observation:

• When using "Auto-Tone" with PV2012, I noticed that many times, the "Whites" slider has "+" values that I never obtain manually. By the time I work the sliders "top-down" I very rarely need to adjust "Whites". This leads me to believe I am not understanding and taking advantage of all the "Basic" sliders and there intricate relationship.

How are we to proceed?  Here is my approach - and still learning!

1. I "Auto-Tone" my process PV2012 images, then...
2. drag my "Exposure" (either Histogram or Slider) to properly Brighten/Darken the image as needed, then,
3. drag the "Contrast" slider (if needed) to obtain a pleasant balance.

Pros:

• This produces Quick results that are usually better than PV2010 Auto-Tones
• Maintains the benefits of "Top-Down" processing. Using the "Exposure & "Contrast" sliders, I do not adjust...
  • the "Blacks" and "Whites" sliders   (B&W Point?) - optimized by PV2012 "Auto-Toning"
  • or the "Highlights" and "Shadows" sliders - taking full advantage of PV2012 advanced adaptive processing

Cons:

• I know it is a pain for production but it can get pretty fast and leave the fine tuning for the 2nd pass.

Just my thought... I will watch to see yours

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.

In my view "ssprengel" has the key with the observation of the "three white areas", it seems all photos that are overly dark using PV2012 "Auto-Toning" are affected by a very white area.  Either specular or a small light. Refer to dirgle's bike shot with the bike lamp, JohnMBStewart's car headlight, "L gl L's" child shot with the while road strip in background, or the Wes Craft's lights in the background of the wedding shot.

What does this suggest?  PV2012 "Auto-Toning" finds the brightest area performs great highlight recovery on it (whether it should or not) and reduces the exposure of the rest of the photo in some fashion. My guess is that it has some relationship to the redistribution that occurs with CS5 (as I note the manual entry posted by CSS Simon "The intermediate pixel values are redistributed proportionately". 

The highlight recovery on this brightest area is probably done irrespective of where it is on the image (very likely true) and either ignores how much of the image is near bright in relation to the brightest point or the wieghting given to it is low.

If this is correct, maybe the answer is Autotone has to determine how much of the image is very bright (size of histogram at the point) versus how much of the image is near bright, and so on down the image. Using some weighting measure you can:

1. not recover (or severly limit) as it is specular or a light (small area very bright, not much is near bright)
2. give a decent attempt to recover as with clouds or wedding dress shots (small to medium area very bright, fair amount of image near bright)
3. give a strong attempt to recover as with snow shots (if medium or greater area very bright, large portion of image near bright).

Finally, given the reduction of exposure somehow "follow's the lead" of highlight recovery, exposures should be closer to expected.

What do you think?

Steven Bodnar wrote:

 

What do you think?

I think you may be on to something (and Adobe is working on this).

Cheers,

Rob

After initial check (brief) - it seems Adobe opted for a more predictablle set of adjustments for auto-toning:

exposure, contrast, whites, & blacks.

Is it just me, or are highlights & shadows always 0 after auto-toning for you too?

Rob

A tip from Jeff Schewe (in his LR4 Tutorials with Michael Reichman) is to manually set the Exposure so that it is roughly correct, and then to auto set the other sliders by holding down the shift key while double clicking on each slider name.

Bob Frost

bob frost wrote:

 

A tip from Jeff Schewe (in his LR4 Tutorials with Michael Reichman) is to manually set the Exposure so that it is roughly correct, and then to auto set the other sliders by holding down the shift key while double clicking on each slider name.

 

Bob Frost

I wonder if there is any advantage in that over just clicking auto-tone and then adjusting exposure(?)

(this is all academic to me, since I don't use auto-tone - just a curiousity...)

R

So, auto-tone improved in Lr4.1 final, in your estimation?

I'm just wingin' it here too .

But, what's your take on:

Auto-tone followed be exposure adjustment, vs.

Exposure adjustment followed by individual auto-toning of the others.

?

Thanks Bob - that makes sense.

Thanks for the tip trshaner.