The Landscape Photography Book

Using the Auto Button as a Starting Place

Both Lightroom and Photoshop’s Camera Raw have an Auto button in the Basic panel, and although it used to be pretty darn awful, they’ve majorly updated how it works, so now it’s just awful (and not “pretty darn”). Okay, it’s not awful, it’s actually (finally) pretty decent to use as a starting place. It doesn’t give you a finished image, but if you’re not sure where to start, this is as good a place as any. My problem with how it works is this: it opens up the shadow areas too much and it lowers the contrast. Say that last line aloud: “it lowers the contrast.” Whoever thought of that idea at Adobe was ...