Taking Control of the Auto Function In Adobe Camera Raw

Adobe'sCamera Rawhas become for many photographers thelingua francaof raw file processing. It comes included withPhotoshop CS2andPhotoshop Elements, and is updated frequently with support for new cameras, almost as soon as they appear.
There are also few who doubt that from an image quality perspective, Camera Raw is right up there with the best of the competition. But there is one thing that has bugged me about CR and that's the fact that its default configuration is such that theExposure,Shadows,BrightnessandContrastsettings default toAuto. This means that when an image is brought into Camera Raw from previewing in Adobe Bridge, each of these adjustments are preselected to their automatic setting.
Hang On. Namibia – April, 2006
Canon 1Ds MKII with 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens @ ISO 200
For many photographers this is not a bad thing. It makes processing images quicker, without the need to tweak each one. Sometimes the Auto settings are very good, and sometimes not so good, but they ...