Your imageare are getting overexposed with LR's Auto tone because you are over exposing them in the camera'Exposing to the Right' means getting a histogram that has a normal Bell shape skewed to the right but not bumping a against the right wall. Lightroom CC is getting a Tone Curve tool that lets photographers have precise control over tonality, contrast, and color balance. “You can use either the Parametric Curve or the Point Curve modes to tune the tonality and contrast of the image, and the Red, Green, and Blue modes to adjust the color balance and stylize your image,”.
Ok ive got a D300 and an assortment of reasonably decent lenses and am happy taking the shots that im taking. BUT i always seem to have to use auto tone in lightroom to get a better looking picture than the one that the camera took.I generally use Apeture priority and like i say, thing look ok, but why doesnt the camera give me the 'richness' of colour that auto tone does? If i put the camera in manual mode and adjust settings so that the light meter bar is correctly exposed im in the same boat as Aperture priority mode, a nice pic but never as nice as the adjusted version.If i toggle between the before and after versions of the pics, the before's look a little washed out, lack of contrast. I use the area metering mode setting, cant remember if thats the right name for it, its the middle setting on the metering dialIs there something im missing to get a better photo in the first place? The file doesn't have 'no processing'. The default is to apply Adobe Standard camera profile which will do all sorts of things to the tone curve, saturation, sharpening etc.
It will also apply a white balance adjustment, without which the image will have a strong green tint. The data also has to be converted to a colour space. You really cannot sensibly look at a raw file without processing it.If you want to see the image with less processing (not 'no' processing) then try using the Zeroed preset. Here's an image imported on Lightroom defaults and then with the Zeroed preset applied.
![Over-exposing Over-exposing](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125492925/783780895.png)
As you can see the defaults have made a nice vibrant image. There is plenty of processing going on there. Yes, I also adjust each image to suit its needs and my desires. My point is that Lightroom can get you to a pretty decent starting point right off the bat.
Some photos need lots of work, some a little, some need none. Each is different. But if you have to routinely hit Auto Tone to get you to a good starting position then my guess is there's something wrong somewhere in the workflow. The complaint in the opening post is the need to always use Auto Tone. That is far from my experience with Lightroom. I don't know what effect the auto tone adjustment had on each exposure related parameter, but is that an adjustment of +67 on highlight recovery?
If so, and the boats are still blown out then that's overexposure. That's why the scene looks washed out rather than rich and colourful.
It's possibly not far over, but it is over, and the edited adjustment, while looking good initially, is perhaps just a little overcooked. It's punchy, but slightly fake looking. I bet the original is nearer the truth, but maybe overexposed by about 1/3 of a stop. What were your exposure settings for the shot?EDIT: Actually I've just brought up clipping warnings in Lightroom on your screen print. There is only a little clipping on the boats in the original shot. It actually seems about right to me on that basis.
I'm not sure what your auto tone adjustment did, but something looks a little off with the adjustments battling each other.Also, what was your focal length for this? How far is it to the boats? In weather like this you can easily find a hazy atmosphere and that reduces contrast which needs correcting in post for the best result. The farther you are from your subject/scene the more of a problem such an atmosphere can becomes. Cheers for that.
![Over-exposing Over-exposing](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125492925/484378515.jpg)
Pretty intersting points. The settings were 24mm 1/80th at f11 iso200 The boat on the right was maybe 30-40 feet awayYeah there was a lot of highlight recovery on there but that step wasnt on the screen dump, just the original import on the Before and the Auto tone on the after.
I appreciate what you say when you point out the After being overdone, but the Before is defenitly a bit wishy washy, the world through my eyeballs at the time would of been something in between, shame Lightroom doesnt give that option yetI will scrub the history and just fiddle with the sliders a little to see if i can get something a bit better.edit. actually, just hit the reset button on all the changes and its defaulted the Brightness to +50 Putting that back down to 0 gives a more natural look. So maybe its the Raw import processing thats going a bit doo lally and over exposing it when i load them into lightroom in the first place. These computers are all a bit confusing, we should all just go back to polaroids and be happy. Oh yes, now you've pointed it out I see that.There's a rule of thumb for shooting in bright sunshine with the sun lighting your subject/scene called the 'Sunny 16 Rule'. It works pretty well for holding bright details in whites in sunshine.
It may need a little adjusting when in ultra-reflective scenes like a snow covered mountain when skiing or a white, sandy beach, but it is a good guide for 'normal' sunlit scenes.At 1/80, f/11, 200 ISO your exposure is 2 1/3 stops brighter than a Sunny 16 exposure. Now, you had a CPL fitted, so you've probably lost between 1 1/3 and 2 stops from the filter depending on brand and grade, so that's narrowed the gap. It still puts you over by maybe 1/3 to 2/3 of a stop but it's definitely in the ballpark. It would be nice to have the raw file to play with, but I bet knocking 1/3 off the exposure, dialing in a little highlight recovery - maybe +20 at a guess - and adding 5-10 points to your black level would have you even closer.EDIT: Actually, you might get away with simply deepening the blacks, with no changes at the top end at all.