Auto white point setting: bug or feature?

[jrp]

When I shift click the white control in Lightroom, it often goes to -100 and alt-clicking the slider shows that it can be pushed up considerably before clipping occurs.  My suspicion is that the highlights slider and the whites slider should be inter-dependent, but that the Shift-Whites ignores the Highlights settings in making its choice.

Anyone got any better insights as to what is going on?

Bring on Process 2016.  (No hope of that, since it would probably mean having to change the entire line of Adobe products.)

[rdonson]

Adobe built Lightroom to be used in a top-down manner.

My workflow follows that:

- adjust highlights
- adjust shadows
- Shift-Whites (Lightroom's best guess where the white point should be)
- press alt/option-Whites to verify/adjust the white point is where you want it
- Shift-Blacks (Lightroom's best guess where the black point should be)
- press alt/option-Blacks to verify/adjust the black point is where you want it
- adjust highlights and shadows again if needed

"Auto" adjustments are often a good starting point but rarely perfect

[dwswager]

When I shift click the white control in Lightroom, it often goes to -100 and alt-clicking the slider shows that it can be pushed up considerably before clipping occurs.  My suspicion is that the highlights slider and the whites slider should be inter-dependent, but that the Shift-Whites ignores the Highlights settings in making its choice.

Anyone got any better insights as to what is going on?

Bring on Process 2016.  (No hope of that, since it would probably mean having to change the entire line of Adobe products.)

Key is ensuring the appropriate profile for the image is set first.  Then my process is usually:

1. Auto:  take a look and see if it is reasonable.  Then I reset to default.
2. Adjust Black and White (If in ACR I might drop a sample point on the parts I still want detail in)
3. Adjust Exposure if I need to to change overall exposure.  I shoot significant underexposure at night on my Nikons.
4. Adjust contrast to my liking
5. Adjust the Shadows and Highlights.
6. Re-adjust Blacks and Whites as necessary

Go work the rest of the panels and then back to main panel to tweak or recover from others.