2 Lightroom Questions - Auto-tone and color pop.

I do a lot of marching band / color guard events and have noticed 2 recurring issues that I'd like to find a way around if possible.

1. I use auto-tone after cropping as a first step. In nearly every instance, the auto-tone tends to make photos come out too dark. I nearly always have to bump exposure to get what I consider a good result. After applying auto-tone, there is nearly always space on the far right (highlights) of the histogram. I like the highlights nearly all the way over to the right. Is there a way to easily do this without adjusting each photo?

2. To make colors stand out and pop, I normally bump luminance and vibrance for individual colors in a photo. For example, in the attached files, I would bump yellow, orange, purple magenta. Even doing so, the colors do not pop as much as I'd like. The Lightroom presets such as vivid, etc. don't work that well either. Any suggestions?

tspencer1 wrote in post #18849675
I do a lot of marching band / color guard events and have noticed 2 recurring issues that I'd like to find a way around if possible.

1. I use auto-tone after cropping as a first step. In nearly every instance, the auto-tone tends to make photos come out too dark. I nearly always have to bump exposure to get what I consider a good result. After applying auto-tone, there is nearly always space on the far right (highlights) of the histogram. I like the highlights nearly all the way over to the right. Is there a way to easily do this without adjusting each photo?

2. To make colors stand out and pop, I normally bump luminance and vibrance for individual colors in a photo. For example, in the attached files, I would bump yellow, orange, purple magenta. Even doing so, the colors do not pop as much as I'd like. The Lightroom presets such as vivid, etc. don't work that well either. Any suggestions?

Hosted photo: posted by tspencer1 in
./showthread.php?p=188​49675&i=i87970004
forum: RAW, Post Processing & Printing

Thanks,

Tim

Hosted photo: posted by tspencer1 in
./showthread.php?p=188​49675&i=i73277502
forum: RAW, Post Processing & Printing

I do not use the current version of LR, so cannot answer specifics on auto tone.

.... but I would think you can easily create your own presets.

Use auto tone as normal, then save different presets with varying degrees of bumped up exposure.


Also, I like to name my saved presets or folders so they will show up at the top of the presets list.

PS : I think your images look pretty good as they are.

Lacogada - thank you for the tip; and also the nice compliment.

A couple of thoughts:

A preset for doing the initial adjustment will probably work, but you can also adjust one image to suit the look you are after and then sync the settings from that image with all of the other, similar images (lighting, costume colors, etc).

To get the colors to pop, you probably want to shoot a color reference (like a Macbeth Color Checker, or similar) in the lighting environment in which you are shooting. This looks like a gymnasium, and who knows what crappy lighting is employed in this environment. Take the time to shoot a reference of the CC card and make your own profile for that lighting. You will, hopefully, get specific color rendering and white balanced data for that lighting that might provide better skin tones and color rendition.

Once that is dialed in, you can make your "pop" adjustments with the HSL controls and sync those across similar images as well.

kirk

Thanks Kirk.

If you have clear personal requirements and objectives, Auto Tone is not for you. Auto Tone is AI; Adobe collected thousands of photos from successful Pros, learned them and analyzed them for general principles and made the product into a big ol' algorithm. If your taste leads you to a different rendering, be yourself.

What colour profiles are you using? Canon or Adobe?

Auto is not responsible for pop. It just takes care of clipping, exposure, etc. However it does drop contrast a bit too much for most. Down to -20 at times. You may want to take that back to zero and see if you like it better. Adobe is aware of the contrast issue and is working on the fix. Sensei is being trained on a continuous basis and will improve over time. Personally I find it a huge benefit. I shot my friends hockey game a few weeks ago (450 shots) and applied Auto to all of them. Saved tons of time by breezing through the base edits.

I use this plug-in that controls what Sensei thinks mainly to keep it from dropping the contrast that much. First LR's Auto is applied and then it adjusts for your desired settings. It is donation basis and you have to donate when a new version comes out. Not 8.2 to 8.3 but Version 9. It is the last tool - Personalized Auto Tone.

http://regex.info …oom-goodies/bag-o-goodies

If you find Vivid does not have enough pop. You can experiment with the HSL/Color panel. Finding some presets that give you want might be a better option.

digital paradise wrote in post #18850778
What colour profiles are you using? Canon or Adobe?

I don't have LR in front of me now, but I think Adobe - or whatever the default is. Would changing to Canon help? Thanks!

Thanks for the tip on Auto-tone; I'll take a closer look. And don't get me wrong, I think auto does a wonderful job at fixing highlight and shadow issues, just overall a bit dark. Will take a look at the plugin-in - many thanks.

tspencer1 wrote in post #18850804
Thanks for the tip on Auto-tone; I'll take a closer look. And don't get me wrong, I think auto does a wonderful job at fixing highlight and shadow issues, just overall a bit dark. Will take a look at the plugin-in - many thanks.

You can control that with that plug-in.

tspencer1 wrote in post #18850800
I don't have LR in front of me now, but I think Adobe - or whatever the default is. Would changing to Canon help? Thanks!

No it will make it worse. I discovered that Auto does not play nicely with Canon profiles. It over protects highlights and underexposes really badly. It makes sense as Adobe built Sensei based on their profiles, not a version of Canon.

I like Canon profiles, particularly Standard which I find gives more of a punchy look to it. I can't describe or replicate it using Adobe. I did at one time use Adobe Vivid and tried to adjust it to match but just couldn't get it. My work around now is I import using Adobe Color, apply Auto Tone and then I convert to Canon Standard.

One more thing. At the Lightroom Queen's site they discovered that applying Auto during import is messing up exposures. Not sure if you are doing that but until Adobe corrects that I would not advise it.

There are two options. The plug-in. While in the Develop module you can select some or all the files and apply it. It will analyze each file separately. Without the plugin. In the Develop module. Select some or all the files and set the Sync switch to Auto Sync (image below). This will make it analyze each file separately as well. After all my files have been Auto'd I have a preset that changes all the files to Canon Standard.

Last. Take a look at Clarity which adds to mid tone contrast. Auto does not adjust Clarity. I have mine set to +12 which applies automatically at import. You might want to add more. I set Clarity to apply (and also lens corrections) to auto apply at import using the Default Develop Settings.

Auto does adjust Vibrance which adds to only the least saturated colours.

Amendment I forgot to add the image.

Forgot to say. Profiles I created using ColorChecker passport do seem to suffer the same under exposure symptoms that Canon profiles do. Basically the same thing as the Macbeth thingy kirtt mentioned.

I also use this plug-in by the same author. It applies noise reduction based on ISO using a logarithm. I actually have no NR applied when I import. It helps me a lot as well.

I'll try and keep this short as possible. Before this plug-in I had sets of master files for each camera which were based on ISO. ISO 100, 200, 400, 800 and so on. Each file has specific NR settings. For example ISO 100 had 10 NR and 32,000 had 60. The others fell in between based in the ISO value. I set it up using the Default Develop Settings the I included Clarity of +12 and lens corrections - for each file.

I kept them in a separate area and only made changes to them when I wanted to alter the Develop Default settings. It was the only way I could keep track of it all. The files didn't even have to be in focus or exposed properly. They were just a reference to what I wanted to happen at import. The only downside to my method was that I could not use Auto ISO. Trying to keep up with all the mid ISO values would have been a nightmare so I went with 1/1 increments, not 1 /3. That gave me 10 master files per camera.

Now with this plug-in I only need one master file, I set the ISO increments to 1 /3 and can now use Auto ISO.

http://regex.info …room-goodies/bulk-develop

Here is using a Canon profile and Auto. 1st image is before Auto. 2nd image. Auto took the exposure to -73.

All good stuff - MANY thanks.

RE:

>>> One more thing. At the Lightroom Queen's site they discovered that applying Auto during import is messing up exposures. Not sure if you are doing that but until Adobe corrects that I would not advise it. <<<

I don't do auto during import; have been doing using autosync.

Adobe vivid preset - agree - I don't like the looks of that one too much.

And thanks for the ISO preset tips. Have been adjusting in batches 12800, 8000, etc. The noise reduction of Lightroom is phenomenal - and one of the reasons I'm willing to fork over $ to Adobe every month.