The motivation behind this question is pretty much the same as for this one. I considered continuing the prior topic but thought this is enough different that it ought to be posted separately.
The GIMP tool accessed by Color>Levels offers an option called “Auto Input Levels”. I find it to be remarkable for 2 reasons. First is how easy it is to use. Just select and check the preview to see if the result is desired. Second, I almost always find the result to be desired.
Rawtherapee (RT) has a tool on the “Exposure” tab called “Auto Levels” which is also quite remarkable. However, in this case I’m usually using it to develop a raw file and while it is similarly easy to use I find that I invariably need to do some additional tweaking with the exposure controls as well as other tools to get a desired result.
I’m curious to know what if any similarities might exist between these 2 tools other than the name. I have tried applying both solely to the same image and the results are NOT very similar. Is it possible that RT can do the same thing but that it goes by a different name?