This will probably make me sound like a rank amateur, but : Is there no ‘auto adjust’ function for images within DxO Photolab?
PL5 is by far my favourite interface for processing images, however the lack of an auto-adjust function (at least that I can find) is super annoying.
I know that ideally I should be manually processing each image, however I found in Lightroom and ON1 that clicking the ‘Auto’ button usually got me 95% the way from the RAW to where I needed the final image to be, and when batch processing 50+ images at a time was a massive timesaver.
I realise that PL5 does some amazing stuff ‘automatically’ like lens correction, DeepPrime, etc etc - but that’s what I’m not talking about, i’m talking about the one-click ‘best guess’ adjustments for exposure, highlights/shadows, white/black point, saturation and vividness that the likes of Lightroom or ON1 offer. And usually, they’re pretty close to what I ultimately want.
Is this function completely missing from PL5 or am I just blind?
There are some adjustments that have auto settings. But in general there is nothing like auto adjust.
I’ve made a few feature requests before to get closer to that 95% number with automatic adjustments and I guess, at least the community here is more interested in tweaking things manually and not letting the software make too many decisions for them. At least based on the responses.
Thanks for the thoughts. It’s a shame, as with an auto function I could completely ditch Lightroom and ON1 for PL5, as opposed to at the moment I have to do a 2-step workflow bulk processing from RAW->DNG in PL5 and then finishing up in one of the other two tools It’s just too slow and onerous bulk-processing final images in PL5, and the Nik Collection is great for ‘artistic’ presentations but when all you want is a ‘true to life’ representation of the image you took they don’t cut the mustard like Auto Adjust does.
Have you tried the DxO Smart Lighting function? This is very close to Auto function in other software and should be enabled by default in the default settings applied to each photo.
Actually it’s not at all like auto function. It’s an interesting tool which applies regional lighting adjustments. I generally use a bit of it in my default preset but in general I tend not to like the local contrast/brightness changes it does in the dark parts of the scene if I use more than 30 or 50.
I did some testing with capture one and what worked for me to speed the process was use free Adobe DNG converter to convert all of my raws to DNGs. This is fast. Then I can start editing in capture one… I can complete the capture one edits while DXO was making DeepPRIME noise reduced DNGs. Then after alll the edits were done I just replace the DNGs with the ones created by DXO and I’m ready to export from capture one. It worked well as DXO doesn’t affect the color of you use the correct output setting.
I understand the concept here, but it’s an extremely expensive solution just to replicate auto adjustment - PL5 and CaptureOne are both at the expensive end of the spectrum, and buying both would be prohibitive for a hobbyist photographer like me.
Really wish they would add an Auto Adjust button - they’ve got automatic options on many of the correction panels, how about just 2 more on the Highlights/Shadows and Saturation panels
I have done the same thing and it gets me probably 90% of the way for most of my photos. Some I need to tweak a little and a very few I use Local Adjustments on. I’m an amateur.
I realize that the results you’re getting from PhotoLab’s auto or default settings aren’t what you want. But as it is right now, one could say that Smart Lighting is an auto-adjustment of Highlights/Shadows and that Color rendering is an auto-adjustment that includes saturation. I generally like Smart Lighting at 25 (the default), but have my own setting for Color rendering that gets the saturation the way I like most of the time.
If you really want images that look “true to life” with little or no post-processing, then you need to learn how to use your camera in such a way that your images don’t need post-processing. Old-fashioned ideas like getting the exposure, contrast, colour balance, saturation, etc right before pressing the shutter.
Either that or set your camera to JPEG mode, fully automatic and don’t even think about RAW files - all these “automatic” gizmos are set to give you average results according to some algorithm dreamed up by an engineer in a software company.
Joanna with all due respect you’re just suggesting we don’t know how to use our cameras and we should learn and shoot JPG. And then we don’t need Photolab at all.
I was just suggesting the other commenter didn’t need the full blown Photolab just to take advantage of DeepPRIME. Trying to offer a helpful suggestion other than learn how to take a picture.
Made me chuckle, well done sir. However, it should be pointed out I’m not asking for a unicorn here, only… a function that every other prominent photo editing software on the planet offers. Lightroom has it, ON1 has it (in both Camera Match and AI mode), CaptureOne has it (in multiple flavours), Affinity Photo has it, Luminar AI literally is one big auto-adjust function… and PL5 already has it on about 50% of its tools.
It’s just too slow and onerous bulk-processing final images in PL5, and the Nik Collection is great for ‘artistic’ presentations but when all you want is a ‘true to life’ representation of the image you took they don’t cut the mustard like Auto Adjust does.
