# Auto Tone / White Sky



## Witterings (Oct 1, 2014)

I bought Lightroom mainly as a time saver as overall the Auto tune is quite good for colour adjustment and lightening shadowed areas BUT I find it really whites out the sky and virtually any blue disappears.
I know I can then use the graduation tool but that's more time and I'd rather it didn't make an instance worse than it's starting point as opposed to better ...... does anybody know if there are any easy fixes for this as I would have thought 99% of the time everyone would want a bluer sky rather than a blue ish sky turned white and losing what colour it had.

Any help much appreciated!


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## clee01l (Oct 1, 2014)

Welcome to the forum.
For me AutoTone increases the whites level unnecessarily.  If I use AutoTone, usually the first thing I do after applying auto-tone adjustments is to set the Whites adjustment to Zero. I have a Develop User preset that only adjusts the Whites to zero and affects no other parameters. If that does not help, then you need to reduce the Blue and Aqua Luminance and increase the Blue and Aqua Saturation.  If you get settings that are pleasing then you can create a Develop Preset that adjusts Blue and Aqua Luminance and Saturation and nothing else and see if this is a consistent improvement to the sky if applied to other images.


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## chris02 (Oct 1, 2014)

I agree with Cletus about luminance and saturation but I have given up on Autotone. 

I have started setting highlights to zero and shadows to 100, I then hold down the alt key left click and drag the whites and blacks so they just appear, seems to work.

Also use graduated filter with a tweak of the white balance also brings out the blues.

Also interested to hear what others think.


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## philmar (Oct 1, 2014)

chris02 said:


> I agree with Cletus about luminance and saturation but I have given up on Autotone.
> 
> I have started setting highlights to zero and shadows to 100, I then hold down the alt key left click and drag the whites and blacks so they just appear, seems to work.
> 
> ...



I do exactly the same as chris. I never rely on the Auto Tone. I set the highlights to zero and shadows to 100. I created a preset for this and it does this to every RAW file that I import. Big time saver and I love the results I am getting by doing this.


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## Witterings (Oct 1, 2014)

Thanks for the responses, guess I'm showing my complete lack of knowledge and how new I am to this but the answers have gone waaaay over my head!

OK, I've had a bit of a mess around before posting and found where the saturation and luminance referred to are and had a play around combined with using the graduation filter and have got some good results but with quite a bit of tweaking, I'll see if I can find out how to set pre-sets next as I haven't discovered this yet.

Chris, why do you hold the alt key when dragging the whites and blacks, mine respond either if I hod it down or if I don't ..... I'm guessing you mean in the Basic function in the develop tab???


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## Witterings (Oct 2, 2014)

I thought I'd upload a couple of pictures of my starting point, it might be that as there's no blue in one at all that it's too far gone to recover .... be interested to see what other people's opinions are??


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## chris02 (Oct 2, 2014)

Witterings said:


> Thanks for the responses, guess I'm showing my complete lack of knowledge and how new I am to this but the answers have gone waaaay over my head!
> 
> OK, I've had a bit of a mess around before posting and found where the saturation and luminance referred to are and had a play around combined with using the graduation filter and have got some good results but with quite a bit of tweaking, I'll see if I can find out how to set pre-sets next as I haven't discovered this yet.
> 
> Chris, why do you hold the alt key when dragging the whites and blacks, mine respond either if I hod it down or if I don't ..... I'm guessing you mean in the Basic function in the develop tab???




Can I suggest you take a look at Serge Ramelli's youtube channel loads of great info.

This one from about 8 mins in describes the use of the alt key, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGREWqMSUJ0&index=5&list=PLjOh-8phdEaBTWlkbuZ6RTFIJDL6ATKaX


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## Witterings (Oct 2, 2014)

chris02 said:


> Can I suggest you take a look at Serge Ramelli's youtube channel loads of great info.
> 
> This one from about 8 mins in describes the use of the alt key, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGREWqMSUJ0&index=5&list=PLjOh-8phdEaBTWlkbuZ6RTFIJDL6ATKaX



Awesome !!!!!!! A big thank you for that !!!!!


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## Tony Jay (Oct 3, 2014)

Hi Witterings.

I uploaded the second JPEG to play with in Lightroom.
Most of the sky is irreversibly blown and cannot be recovered.
However, if it was originally shot as a RAW image it is likely that much more could be recoverable.

Part of the lesson to be learned here is exposing appropriately for the scene so as not to blow the highlights and part of the lesson is that Lightroom is best used by learning how to use the Develop module properly.
The features allowing automation in the Develop module are best applied by synchronising settings once an index image has been optimally processed.
If one shoots in a studio with consistent lighting then formalising those develop settings with a preset is very useful.

Clearly, the best way to lever the power of Lightroom's Develop settings is to make sure you are shooting in a RAW format and not JPEG's.

Tony Jay


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## davidedric (Oct 3, 2014)

I'm another who does not use AutoTone, but I am puzzled by the idea of pushing some controls to their limits on all photos.   For example, how much I want to open up the shadows (if at all) is entirely dependent on the image.   Similarly, I may want a precise black point,  or I may want to clip blacks if I'm not losing important details, or even decide that I don't want a true black point at all.   Mind you,  I am not a high volume photographer. 

Dave


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## tspear (Oct 5, 2014)

Dave,

I use auto tone all the time. Normally as part of my quick sort when trying to decide which pic to star as one I would work with later. 
Maybe because I am fairly new to Lightroom and photography in general, I find the auto tone works great to get me in the ballpark and I can tweak the settings from that point faster then if I just do it on my own. Works about 75% of the time for me, the rest of the time after hitting the auto tone, I hit reset and go completely manual because the auto tone screws up so bad.

Tim


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## chris02 (Oct 5, 2014)

Another alternative is to "shift click" on each of the sliders in the basic pannel, I have also set up a preset for this along with my other approach of setting highlights to zero and shadows to 100, I then hold down the alt key left click and drag the whites and blacks so they just appear.


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