How to get the perfect tonal range everytime.

Many people don’t know this, but you can also apply Adobe Lightroom’s Auto Tone feature selectively to specific tools. Simply hold down the Shift key and double-click, for example, on EXPOSURE. In Lightroom Classic, there’s no indicator showing that an automatic adjustment is about to be applied, but it still works. I find this particularly helpful when setting the black and white points. My workflow goes as follows:

1. Exposure
2. White and Black Point
3. Vibrance and Saturation
4. Sometimes I reduce the contrast, but only in particularly high-contrast scenes. The RGB curves in the Tone Curve of the preset usually create enough contrast.

Give it a try. It’s quite fast, and in 95% of cases, you’ll nail the tonal values perfectly. The only tricky subjects are those where there’s essentially no pure white or black. In those cases, it’s up to you to interpret it.