In the present paper, right 2-Engel elements, central automorphisms and commuting automorphisms of Lie algebras will be studied. For this purpose, first the structure of the set of all right 2-Engel elements of a Lie algebra will be examined and then, by taking advantage of it, a number of interesting results about central and commuting automorphisms of Lie algebras will be presented. Finally, a characterization of Lie algebras for which the set of central automorphisms is trivial or the set of commuting automorphisms is trivial will be given. © 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston.