Warning about the new 'auto color' feature in Procreate 5.3

I had to pick between using the new auto color tool or doing my palette by hand for a client piece. I went with auto color to save time, and it totally wrecked the mood of my night cityscape. The blues went flat and the neon signs lost their pop, so I had to redo the whole thing from scratch in about 4 hours. Has anyone else had a similar mess with this update?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_adam12d ago

You said it wrecked the mood, but maybe the tool just showed a weak spot in your original palette. Cooper.phoenix is right that it's a starting point, not a magic button, and expecting perfect results without any tweaks is setting yourself up to fail.

cooper.phoenix12d ago

My last three night scenes actually got better with the auto color tool. It pulled a really deep indigo I wouldn't have tried on my own. For me, it works best as a starting point before I tweak the sliders for contrast and saturation. I can see how using it straight on a finished piece would cause problems though.

king.wyatt9d ago

Tried the auto color on a forest scene and it completely washed out the shadows, made everything look weirdly bright and fake. I learned the hard way to only use it on a duplicate layer at the very start, and then I push the saturation and contrast sliders way up to get it back to something usable. It can give you a decent base if you fight with it, but it definitely can't read the mood you're going for.