Terry is right, I meant the controls on the masking tab to pick exposure and contrast.
I wonder if it a bit of push pull going on…ie is the result of one impacting the other. I have gotten used to just clicking back and forth a couple or 3 times and it end up centered usually… so essentially offering iterations…
That was my idea as well. Only controls that directly affect the histogram should be in the advanced tab.
It’s not an interplay between contrast and exposure. See how the value changes between -0.84, -0.85 and -0.86 (I keep clicking the exposure compensation ‘magic wand’):
Also for @rvietor.
I couldn’t make them work on my windows computer V4.7. Short cuts like that sound a nice idea.
I barely looked into it, but I think this is what the auto is doing.
#define CONTRAST_FULCRUM exp2f(-4.0f)
// calculate exposure correction
const float fd_new = exp2f(g->histogram_first_decile);
const float ld_new = exp2f(g->histogram_last_decile);
const float e = exp2f(p->exposure_boost);
const float c = exp2f(p->contrast_boost);
// revert current transformation
const float fd_old = ((fd_new - CONTRAST_FULCRUM) / c + CONTRAST_FULCRUM) / e;
const float ld_old = ((ld_new - CONTRAST_FULCRUM) / c + CONTRAST_FULCRUM) / e;
// calculate correction
const float s1 = CONTRAST_FULCRUM - exp2f(-7.0);
const float s2 = exp2f(-1.0) - CONTRAST_FULCRUM;
const float mix = fd_old * s2 + ld_old * s1;
p->exposure_boost = log2f(CONTRAST_FULCRUM * (s1 + s2) / mix);
I just click one then the other and then back and forth usually if it is not right in one cycle a second cycle or usually at most a 3rd one will end up with the mask centered and expanded as much as it can given the image…
@g-man with each weekly build on Windows I jump straight to the tone equalizer looking for your new improvement to the advanced tab. I hope this idea is still on the cards for 4.8. because your proposal looked great.
It did not worked out. I’m still thinking of options.
Good luck because the idea is both brilliant and needed.
There is code that is part of the lua script for the initial workflow script and one option in that script is to enable the pickers so that when you open the tone eq the mask is centered… I haven’t used it for a while but it seemed to do a good job… That module had a ton of options and could be slow but if that part of the code works more consistently than what happens from within the module then maybe it could point to an improvement in the code…
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I stopped using it because it was too slow for me.
Ya I think its slow to do all the things it does but if it could just do one or two key sub functions then it might be quicker ….
I have found that while it may seem habit to do the top slider first… go the other way click the contrast one first then exposure… I think the hit rate for a centered result is much better…
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I am still keen on the idea of the sliders being in the advanced tab but I wonder if another option would be to replace the current display in the masking tab with the histogram?
@123sg I revisited this thread today and I have set up the QA panel to contain the tone equalizer with the simple sliders which I use for fine tuning. This is closer to how I would like to see the module for my use. Thanks for the suggestion.
Also having the graph and the mask compensation sliders together makes this module so much more efficient to use.
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Nice idea, I ran to try it! 
It works well as far as it goes, but the cursor does not become a tone-equaliser cursor when moved to the picture.
I agree that it looks good having the two sliders under the graph.
It actually functions better. Not just about looks. In the modules design you can’t see the histogram that is being changed by the sliders, but in how I have set it up in the QA panel I can move the sliders and see the changes in real time. This is how it could be improved in the module itself. Once I have set the mask I click on the icon in the top right corner and this takes me to the module in my normal tab and then the tone equalizer curser is active when you hover over a section of the picture. I really wish the tone equalizer module itself got a facelift to work in the most efficient way, but for now the QA view I have created helps me a lot.
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Terry, I don’t really get it why you in the limited area of the QAP allocate space for both the sliders and the movable nodes from the advanced tab , (or have I misunderstood something?). This appears to me to be a unnecessary/costly duplication.
@EspE1 the important improvement for me is that I can seen the histogram’s changes as I move the mask exposure and contrast. I can’t do this in the original modules design. Adding the sliders for the different EV values is less important as I usually return to the module itself once the mask is adjusted. I will probably remove them later from the QA panel, but at this point of time the QA panel is only used to adjust the tone equalizers mask.