Lightroom 7.2 introduced an entirely new version of its “Auto Tone” feature, a one-click adjustment of photo brightness and contrast to hopefully-pleasing results. The prior version of Auto Tone used what might be called a “stupid, brute force” method that merely adjusted tone ranges to try find a numeric balance. It wasn't very useful.

The new Auto Tone, however, is fantastic, being powered by an artificial-intelligence engine trained with thousands of hand-tweaked photos from highly-regarded artists. It does a sufficiently-good job that I now use it as part of my new-photo workflow, to give me a better starting point for my own edits. (I should point out, though, that a good photographer wouldn't need any kind of better starting point for edits; a good photographer will do the work prior to pressing the shutter button. I'm not a good photographer.)

As good as the new Auto Tone is, I've found it tends to be a bit heavy handed with saturation for my tastes. I gather that the artists who worked on the photos used to train the AI engine simply prefer to lay on heavy saturation to make the photo “pop”, and perhaps this is why they are highly regarded and I am not, but it seems cheap to me. I'd prefer not to use that as my starting point.

So, to help quicken my workflow in this area, I added new features to my Bag of Goodies plugin for Lightroom that allow one to perform a personalized Auto Tone.

Your personalizations are configured in a dialog brought up by invoking:

File > Plugin Extras > Configure Personalized Auto Tone and Apply

The configuration dialog is this monstrosity:

The plugin allows each of the nine develop settings that Auto Tone touches to be canceled, scaled back, or enhanced. The details are explained on the plugin home page.

Note that even though the new Auto Tone was introduced in Lightroom 7.2, the plugin requires 7.3 to work, as that's when Adobe added the hooks that make the plugin possible.

I've remained friends with the family of one of Anthony's preschool classmates, and even though they haven't been in school together for nine years, we still keep in close touch. The other day I did a quick photoshoot of the family's two girls, Monet and May, who should now be about 15 and 13 years old, respectively.

I'm sort of rusty with the camera, so wasn't sure what to expect, but the moment I took the first photo, I knew that the girls would do all the work and I could just press the button; no photographer skill required when they're so photogenic. 🙂

They've known me since before they can remember, and were on my blog a lot early on (for example, here's Monet 10 years ago and May 11 years ago). But it's been a while since I'd seen them, and they're now perhaps a bit more conscious of their image, so they were understandably a bit nervous with the big lens pointed at them.

I knew that they were a bit nervous, and that I'd have their attention for only a short time, so I tried to be quick. From the first photo to the last was just under 11½ minutes.

I'd love to do this again when the mom is available, to do a real family portrait. Next time!

I recently made the short hike up Mt. Daimonji to the fire pits (which I first blogged about 11 years ago here), with Damien and Chris Rowthorn, the author of the Lonely Planet guides for Japan and Kyoto. Chris often uses Damien's and my photos on his Inside Kyoto site.

The view from where we were, the center of the “大”, is lovely, but today it was ridiculously hazy...

The spec of orange just right of center is the main gate of the Heian Shrine. Compare the photo above to those seen on this post, and this one.

There are lots of paths that crisscross the mountain, and Chris knows them well, so he showed us an alternate way home.

I'd been to this temple many times (example blog post), but had no idea that a mountain path started here.

The cherry tree seen blossoming in the shot above is at the grave of some apparently-famous writer, so we went over to look. On the way, Chris pointed out this interesting gravestone:

All in all, even with our slow pace and all the chatting, the whole walk took only 90 minutes (the walk on Strava). I should do this more often.

I'm finally getting around to write about my first ride in Okinawa a month ago, which came after my “ride” to Okinawa. I posted a few photos in a preview post, but I want to keep the full memory of the lovely day, so I'm writing this report.

Here's the ride we did:

There are no big mountains in the south of Okinawa where we were, but there are plenty of short/steep hills, including two that average 12% over 600m, this and this. These short, intense climbs are the kind that, when I'm in good shape, I can do very well on, but trying that first one showed me just how weak I really was at the moment. I started out with what I thought was an easy pace, but had to scale even that back.

By the second one I had no illusions about my strength, so took it super easy and took photos during the climb...

Jason had shot ahead to position himself halfway to take some photos...

We took a meandering, exploring kind of route that sometimes required getting off the bike...

... but the results were worth it...

There was lots of infrastructure in this area that looked to be abandoned, as if the area grew too quickly after the war, and couldn't support what was built.

This lunch-only cafe serves wonderful home-made meals for a ridiculously cheap 500 yen (about US $4.50)....

The guy pushing his bike up the somewhat steep road was likely on his first ever ride, which seemed to be a commute. We'd encountered him early in the climb, prior to our side visit to the spooky tree, at the side of the road not knowing how to deal with his chain having popped off his gears. We showed him and went on our way, only to encounter him again here.

He's got gearing on his bike such that he should be able to easily ride straight up a brick wall, but I guess it can be overwhelming at first.

This sweeping road is the kind of dream descent that I'd normally like to ride aggressively (segment at Strava), but in recognition of my weak and out-of-practice state, I made the prudent decision to take it easy, and instead take photos of the group on the way down.

Unfortunately, despite going as slowly as I possibly could, it seems that I couldn't go slow enough to keep them in view behind me, so I eventually put the camera away and just coasted down. It was lovely.

After joining up with another road, the descent continued down toward our next destination, which eventually came into view....

I'd seen this big fish on the Google Maps satellite view and thought it'd be fun to visit.

The location also has a “heart bell”....

To be continued...

Cherry are blossoming quite a bit early in Kyoto this year. I had a shopping errand to do, so I took the long way to check out a few cherry-blossom spots around town. Unlike a similar outing last year, this year I had only a small little camera with me, so the photos aren't too exciting, but they perhaps give a sense for some of the places. Many were at full bloom already.

Each photo has a map link under it.

I swung by the Kyoto Imperial Palace Park (京都御所公園), which has some nice blossom areas in its northwest, and wasn't disappointed... it was, by far, the nicest area that I visited today. It had such a lovely vibe.

Any of the “nearby photos” links under the shots above brings you to other blog posts from this area, including many with wonderful blossoms (such as this) or fall colors (such as this).

Clicking through to the Strava activity below brings you to a map showing all the photos.