# Auto Tone vs Auto Levels like PS



## quantum (Jun 9, 2011)

I've posted before along these lines and now put a reqest up too. Here's the issue.. but please try yourself before offering advice.:hm:

I often find that I'm not quite levelling the histogram out as well as it could be. Partly this may be down to the fairly small Lightroom histogram and my high res screen.
When I export my photo into Photoshop I find I can bring in the highlight slider in from the right to make my photo a bit more punchy. This can often be achieved quickly by using Auto Levels which seems to do the job of bringing highlight and shadow detail up to the ends of the graph mostly perfectly.
Auto Tone in Lightroom generally does an awful job as it does far more by adjusting brightness and recovery as well as exposure. It usually changes the picture dramatically for the worse. Strange really as in PS is actually also called Auto Tone!

What about it Adobe? Auto Levels/ Auto Tone along the lines of Photoshop?

Cheers

John


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## Victoria Bampton (Jun 9, 2011)

Hi John

Adobe don't often read this forum, so if you want them to hear, it would be worth posting it over on the Official Feature Request/Bug Report Forum.

In the meantime, have you tried using the clipping warnings to help you set the black and white points in LR, without needing the small histogram.


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## Mark Sirota (Jun 9, 2011)

Also, you can shift-double-click any of the Basic sliders (the ones used by Auto Tone) to Auto-set that particular slider rather than all of them.


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## jbourne (Jun 17, 2011)

Mark Sirota said:


> Also, you can shift-double-click any of the Basic sliders (the ones used by Auto Tone) to Auto-set that particular slider rather than all of them.



Thanks - I didn't know that. Must give it a try. So is doing this with exposure then blacks sliders a quick way to set the clipping points ?

Regards
John


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## b_gossweiler (Jun 17, 2011)

Mark Sirota said:


> Also, you can shift-double-click any of the Basic sliders (the ones used by Auto Tone) to Auto-set that particular slider rather than all of them.



There's something new to learn every day 

Also, what I did is create a couple of presets which only contain the desired sliders out of AutoTone, like this one for AutoExposure and AutoShadows:


```
s = {
    id = "A241C7B5-B9DD-4A9A-B69A-5B007FCB7D6A",
    internalName = "AutoExposure / AutoShadows",
    title = "010 AutoExposure / AutoShadows",
    type = "Develop",
    value = {
        settings = {
            AutoExposure = true,
            AutoShadows = true,
        },
        uuid = "8D1A0CE6-1FFB-4620-A25A-E5F86E0C8167",
    },
    version = 0,
}
```

Beat


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## sizzlingbadger (Jun 17, 2011)

jbourne said:


> So is doing this with exposure then blacks sliders a quick way to set the clipping points ?
> 
> Regards
> John



sort of, the exposure slider is not linear like levels and curves, it will try and bunch the highlights up which can be a problem for some images. I'm hoping we get proper curves in Lightroom 4


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## Kiwigeoff (Jun 17, 2011)

sizzlingbadger said:


> sort of, the exposure slider is not linear like levels and curves, it will try and bunch the highlights up which can be a problem for some images. I'm hoping we get proper curves in Lightroom 4



Hope you've placed a feature request Nik!!


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## Mark Sirota (Jun 18, 2011)

sizzlingbadger said:


> sort of, the exposure slider is not linear like levels and curves, it will try and bunch the highlights up which can be a problem for some images. I'm hoping we get proper curves in Lightroom 4


You're thinking of Brightness, aren't you Nik?


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## sizzlingbadger (Jun 19, 2011)

Mark Sirota said:


> You're thinking of Brightness, aren't you Nik?



nope...  Exposure doesn't appear to be linear in Lightroom in my testing. Look at the attached example, I find it impossible to stretch out the histogram in a linear fashion in Lightroom using the Blacks & Exposure sliders, I always end with over exposed bright tones.

UPDATE:  I have read this now and it makes a lot more sense to me, I will experiment more with the brightness control which should mean I can fix the issue (If Mr Schewe is correct then the Exposure control should be linear if the Brightness control is at zero)

_From Schewe:
By adjusting the Exposure, it's implied that the movement of the clip point should have an impact on the Brightness as well. The primary differences between ACR/LR's Exposure, Brightness and Blacks adjustments and Levels in Photoshop are that you are working on a linear gamma image. The Levels adjustment in Photoshop is working on a non-linear gamma color space.
_


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