Auto tone adjustments

[alexramsay]

I have 'auto tone adjustments' turned on as default in my ACR preferences, which makes a good starting point when I am adjusting and correcting my NEF files. This is followed by conversion to DNG and deletion of the original NEFs. My question is: if I later go back and look at these corrected DNG's in Bridge, and if 'auto tone adjustments' is still selected, will it undo my corrections and return all my DNG's to the default position?

Thanks,
Alex

[grahamR]

to the best of my knowledge, no - your settings will not be overwritten if you have the "auto" set On as default. when you adjus the NEF file, then convert it to a DNG it "bakes" the settings into the file, so when its opened as a DNG all the settings, metadata, labels etc are preserved, the same as the NEF file, but without the need for a sidecar XMP file.

Hope that helps

Graham

[alexramsay]

Thanks Graham - very helpful

[peterkrogh]

Alex,
It's a little more complicated than Graham says.
If you want those settings to stay with the file, you have to first make them sticky to the file.  You can do this by opening all the files in Bridge "apply Camera Raw Defaults" in the Edit>Develop menu items.

If you've never told any program to apply the computer's current default to the files, Camera Raw does not know that you actually want to apply those settings to those images, and therefore won't do it. (Perhaps you're converting images to DNG on one computer in the field to save space, but you intend to do the real work to the images on another computer back in the studio that has defaults set differently.)

Thomas told me he was considering having the DNG converter pick up the current default setting if none were present, but I don't think that change has been made. 

If you are interested in testing, do the following.

1. Duplicate two Raw files to test on
2. Open both in Bridge
3. Select one file, and apply Camera Raw Default
4. Send both through the DNG converter
5. Open the DNGs in Camera Raw
6. Only the one that had defaults applied should have the "Has Camera Raw Settings" badge (the grey circle with the 3 "slider" lines on it).

Peter

[alexramsay]

Thank you Peter - I've run your test and that's exactly what happens.