So I spent a bit of time reading some books today and authors like Martin Evening seems to suggest that the Auto Tone feature is a lot better than what some people may think. Does anyone here use this on a consistent basis or even use it as a starting point in the post processing process?

I found Auto Tone to be pretty useless on earlier versions of Lightroom, but per Martin Evening's suggestion in his book I tried it again with Lightroom 4.

I find it works quite well for a starting point. I especially like using it when shooting events where I have many dozens of images I am working with and need to get through them quickly.

I find its guess on Exposure is not always too good, but that is easy to change.

My suggestion is to try it. I believe you will like it.

Jim

I use it as a bulk setting for newly imported files so that I can whiz through them all and assign a first impression label without being put off by variations in the original exposure settings. After that I revert to default settings and manual tweaks for assessing image quality.

- Alan

Same as Alan Basicly. Although I will import , wiz thru and do auto as I'm going.
Sometimes it makes a pigs ear of it while other times it gets pretty close to even spot on what I want.
In any case by seeing what way the sliders have gone it can give me an idea of the way I want to take things.
Lets face it , as its non destructive it don't matter and it could save alot of effort.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It doesn't hurt to push the button and see. If i can't make a picture look right i often give it a try just for a different view/starting point.

I find Auto Tone works better in Photoshop since you have more control to define how Auto Tone should work.

I've spent some time tweaking the sliders for my import preset. It serves the same function as auto tone for me. I'm really not a "paint by numbers" type of post-process anyway.

Dan Margulis, the famous Photoshop guru, said in his Kelby Training title There Are No Bad Originals, that the stuff you do, such as increasing/decreasing sharpness, contrast, exposures, etc, actually diminishes the quality of the post-processing you can get in Photoshop. And he approves with his workshop examples using world's best retouchers. Basically he gave two versions of the same RAW file, one untouched in RAW converter, which looks flat and dull, the other that has been slighted enhanced and look good to our eyes, to two groups of those retouchers. Time and time again, those that were given untouched raw version always come up with better retouching results in Photoshop.

http://kelbytraining.com/course/margulis_no_bad_originals2/

I generally click Autotone and see what it does. Then I either revert to import and shift + double click each slider manually, and tweak from there, or just tweak each slider individually.

Shift double clicking a slider does the same as Autotone does, but only to that specific slider. It's nice when most of them are pretty close to what you would like, but exposure or something is way off due to highlights clipping.

mshi wrote:
Dan Margulis, the famous Photoshop guru, said in his Kelby Training title There Are No Bad Originals, that the stuff you do, such as increasing/decreasing sharpness, contrast, exposures, etc, actually diminishes the quality of the post-processing you can get in Photoshop. And he approves with his workshop examples using world's best retouchers. Basically he gave two versions of the same RAW file, one untouched in RAW converter, which looks flat and dull, the other that has been slighted enhanced and look good to our eyes, to two groups of those retouchers. Time and time again, those that were given untouched raw version always come up with better retouching results in Photoshop.

http://kelbytraining.com/course/margulis_no_bad_originals2/



That does rather assume you will be using photoshop in your workflow and have the skills and the time to produce top end pro quality output for every image.

15Bit wrote:

That does rather assume you will be using photoshop in your workflow and have the skills and the time to produce top end pro quality output for every image.

Dan Margulis said in the beginning of the video the approach he is about to show you is not intended even for advanced level Photoshop users. In fact, the techniques he was showcasing are for very advanced Photoshop users that fully understand Photoshop internal stuff. No any third-party plug-ins nor any third-party filters are needed at all. The techniques he uses are not time-consuming at all compared to what one normally does in LR tho.

auto tone is a good teacher

sometimes i'll click it and it's junk (most of the time) and i just undo it. but sometimes it gives me a great result that i wouldn't have considered and i can see what settings were used to create the effect and file it away in my brain

shmoogy wrote:

Shift double clicking a slider does the same as Autotone does, but only to that specific slider. It's nice when most of them are pretty close to what you would like, but exposure or something is way off due to highlights clipping.


cool tip!