Lightroom auto-adjust question

jfriend

I'm a long term Bridge/ACR user trying out Lightroom and I have a question. I am used to having Bridge do auto adjustments on my RAW files so I want that again in Lightroom. But, I do not want Lightroom to ever do an auto adjustment on a JPEG file. Is there any way to configure it for auto adjustments on RAW files, but not on JPEGs/TIFFs?

arodney

jfriend wrote:

I'm a long term Bridge/ACR user trying out Lightroom and I have a question. I am used to having Bridge do auto adjustments on my RAW files so I want that again in Lightroom. But, I do not want Lightroom to ever do an auto adjustment on a JPEG file. Is there any way to configure it for auto adjustments on RAW files, but not on JPEGs/TIFFs?

This can be controlled upon import (use preset or not).

jfriend

arodney wrote:

This can be controlled upon import (use preset or not).

This doesn't seem to work. I choose to apply NO preset upon import and then if I look at the JPEG in Lightroom, it does auto-adjust.

The only way I've found to stop it from adjusting a JPEG is to turn the global preference off for auto-adjust which, of course, turns it off for RAWs too.

This always bugged me about ACR too. Why they don't give you separate preference control for RAWs and JPEGs, I have no idea. It's just busted this way. My JPEGs are already done, I never want auto-adjustments applied to them. But, I like using auto-adjustments as a starting point for RAWs. I guess LR just doesn't support this unless there's some other way to enable it.

arodney

jfriend wrote:

This doesn't seem to work. I choose to apply NO preset upon import and then if I look at the JPEG in Lightroom, it does auto-adjust.

I'm not seeing this behavior at all. The JPEGs look the same as they did in say Photoshop. With Raw, you do see an auto update since its building a new, LR generated thumbnail.

rdlugosz

Yea - I think that sounds strange too. I cannot check ATM, but I don't believe I see that behavior. Of course, I don't really use the LR auto adjust feature very often - I really don't like how it prefers to use the contrast/brightness sliders instead of taking advantage of the Fill Light slider. I hope they address that in a future release.

jfriend

rdlugosz wrote:

Yea - I think that sounds strange too. I cannot check ATM, but I don't believe I see that behavior. Of course, I don't really use the LR auto adjust feature very often - I really don't like how it prefers to use the contrast/brightness sliders instead of taking advantage of the Fill Light slider. I hope they address that in a future release.

If you don't use auto adjust, then you must have the global preference turned off, so of course you wouldn't be seeing it on your JPEGs (unless you hit the auto button on them in which case you get what you ask for). I'm talking about the case where the global preference is on (because I wanted to use the feature for my RAWs).

arodney

Just checking on my end, I DO have "Apply Auto Tone Adjustments" off which I believe is also the defaults. Then when you import Raws, you can either let them come in as is (there WILL be an auto update as LR builds high(er) quality thumbnails from the embedded Raw JPEGs) OR you can select a preset. I think this should solve all the issues.

jfriend

arodney wrote:

Just checking on my end, I DO have "Apply Auto Tone Adjustments" off which I believe is also the defaults. Then when you import Raws, you can either let them come in as is (there WILL be an auto update as LR builds high(er) quality thumbnails from the embedded Raw JPEGs) OR you can select a preset. I think this should solve all the issues.

That explains why you don't see it. Maybe that would work for me. There is an existing preset for auto tone that I could use on RAW import.

Is there a way to see what's in the existing presets? I can't find a way to "open" one and see what settings are in it. I can apply it to an image, but that doesn't really show me what's in the preset itself.

arodney

jfriend wrote:

Is there a way to see what's in the existing presets? I can't find a way to "open" one and see what settings are in it. I can apply it to an image, but that doesn't really show me what's in the preset itself.

The default settings are what's used for initial thumbnail building of Raws. If you look at the Quick Develop popup (Default Settings), that's what is being used. Almost everything is zero's out (not Brightness and Contrast, nor the sharpening settings). On Import, the dialog defaults to Develop settings:None but the defaults seen in QD are being used UNLESS you build your own and load it here.

jfriend

arodney wrote:

The default settings are what's used for initial thumbnail building of Raws. If you look at the Quick Develop popup (Default Settings), that's what is being used. Almost everything is zero's out (not Brightness and Contrast, nor the sharpening settings). On Import, the dialog defaults to Develop settings:None but the defaults seen in QD are being used UNLESS you build your own and load it here.

I think I understand that part, but that's not what I was asking about.

There is a list of presets in Lightroom. These start with "Creative - Aged Photo" and end with "Tone Curve - Strong Contrast" in my virgin copy of LR. I was asking if there's a way to see what settings are in a given preset. I ask because I can apply one of these upon import (specifically the "General - Auto Tone"), but I'd like to see what it's configured to do before deciding to use it.

arodney

jfriend wrote:

There is a list of presets in Lightroom. These start with "Creative - Aged Photo" and end with "Tone Curve - Strong Contrast" in my virgin copy of LR. I was asking if there's a way to see what settings are in a given preset.

Click on one in Develop, view the sliders. Those are the settings.

jfriend

arodney wrote:

Click on one in Develop, view the sliders. Those are the settings.

It's a little more work than that. Don't these presets have checkboxes for which settings to apply and which to not touch?

I guess one could reverse engineer them by setting all sliders to some ridiculous value and then see which ones got moved off the ridiculous value by the preset. I was just hoping to look at the various presets and see what they are configured to do without having to reverse engineer them and assume it would be a built-in feature.

jfriend

jfriend wrote:

It's a little more work than that. Don't these presets have checkboxes for which settings to apply and which to not touch?

I guess one could reverse engineer them by setting all sliders to some ridiculous value and then see which ones got moved off the ridiculous value by the preset. I was just hoping to look at the various presets and see what they are configured to do without having to reverse engineer them and assume it would be a built-in feature.

I found the answer to my question. On page 6 of this document: http://inside-lightroom.com/docs/develop_presets_3.pdf, it explains where the presets are stored in your file system (varies by OS) and they are all just text files from which you can easily see what each preset is configured to do.