Auto Exposure in Lightroom

<p>Do you use it?</p>

<p>Several folks here have said it makes their images look worse, but I think it makes most (not all) of my images look a lot better a lot faster than I could do. Am I all wet?</p>

<p>Oops, I think I mean Auto Tone. I'm typing on my iPad in a hotel room and I don't have a computer with Lightroom in front of me. Sorry.</p>

<p>In my experience it is a bit of a hit and miss situation. Sometimes the image improves quickly, sometimes the result is horrible. It depends a bit on the subject, composition, etc. I think it is ok for a first step. When I don't like the result I just hit ctrl-z and change the settings by hand. I guess the latter has to be done for about 20 % of the pictures but YMMV.</p>

<p>+1 to Jos. Exactly my approach and results.</p>

<p>For events where I have to process lots of photos, I start with Auto and then adjust only those where it wasn't enough, or was too much processing.</p>

<p><Chas></p>

<p>I've found that it does horrible corrections to my scanned film images--Auto Tone will usually WAAAAAY overexpose the image with the histogram bunched up to the far right with highlights blown like crazy--but does great job with images from my DSLRs. </p>

I haven't really had alot of success with it. I will usually try it to see what it comes up with but find myself

hitting "undo" pretty often.

 

What I find with Lightroom though is that the Auto White Balance usually makes my photos look better

even though I set it correctly (I think) in camera. I always wondered what could make that happen.

<p>My experience is essentially the same as all previous posters in this thread -- sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. These days, ie, with LR4, my default raw conversion is auto everything off, all sliders zero'ed. I then sort the images into groups by lighting, develop a half-way decent preset for each group, and tweak from there.</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

<p>Re: Lynn.</p>

<p>Funny.... auto white balance usually throws my photos way off. The eyedropper tool often helps, but auto doesn't. Weird science.</p>

<p>Assuming Lightroom Auto Tone is similar to Adobe Camera Raw's auto corrections: when batch processing a card full of raws, I'll run one set with auto correction, and a second with just basic settings, no adjustments. Then compare. Most of the time I'm happy with the auto correction, and if not I have a closer look, either go with basic settings, or make some further adjustements.</p>

<p>Bottom line, t can be beneficial, but once in a while back fires.</p>

<p>I just installed Lightroom 4 and switched my images over to Camera Standard instead of Adobe Standard and now Auto Tone doesn't work very well at all. Not sure why.</p>