I know this is frowned upon, but.....

I want to create an action that adjusts the black points and white points automatically for a folder of images (it's about 600+ images).

Basically I would like to adjust the white point to 243/243/243 and the black point to 5/5/5. I'm a little confused within levels and curves on how exactly to do this; I don't want the very brightest pixel in the original image to be dropped to 243, but rather the extremely bright highlights (like a person's white dress or shirt), and the same for the other end on the shadows.

I wrote an action where I went into the "auto" section of curves and reassigned the black point and white point to my figures mentioned above, and clipping to .2% then saved the action. The only thing is that the action does not record those specific figures, it only records "Curves" "With Auto". I can't figure out how to record all of that as a concrete action, because of course if the auto defaults are changed, or somebody else uses the action, it will use whatever those different defaults are.

Create a Preset with those values. Record the action and point to that Preset. If someone else uses the action they will have to create the Preset before using the Action.

D Thompson wrote in post #16069420
Create a Preset with those values. Record the action and point to that Preset. If someone else uses the action they will have to create the Preset before using the Action.

Awesome--that works for me. Would you happen to know the best way for me to approach this in terms of the settings?

I think the clipping percent value is confusing me. According to Adobe, this dictates how much of either end of the extremes (of the shadows and highlights) it ignores (or something like that). So let's say you set the clipping value to 1% in the highlights, and you click on the color square and set the white point to be 243/243/243; does that mean that the brightest 1% of the pixels that are in the original image are left alone and the brightest pixels that lie just inside of that 1% are remapped to 243?

And what if there were no pixels at or above 243--would it bump some up in order to reach that number?
And what if there were a ton of pixels, like half the image, above 243--what would happen then? (I don't actually promote the concept of having half an image be bleached out, I'm just curious on this one).

I'm finding this particularly difficult to grasp. My goal/concept is to take these few hundred pictures, most of which are nicely exposed, and just run this operation on them in order to kind of balance them all out so they are somewhat equalized.

A couple of articles that might clear it up.

http://helpx.adobe.com …ng/levels-adjustment.html
http://help.adobe.com …39-811F-D7D855C4F860.html

Assuming I read your post correctly (even though I'm at a loss as for why you'd want to do this):

RandMan wrote in post #16069404
I want to create an action that adjusts the black points and white points automatically for a folder of images (it's about 600+ images).

Basically I would like to adjust the white point to 243/243/243 and the black point to 5/5/5.

Just type in the output values you want.
http://monosnap.com …J68PpV16SOom9jj​XaKhSxqjSR

RandMan wrote in post #16069404
I'm a little confused within levels and curves on how exactly to do this; I don't want the very brightest pixel in the original image to be dropped to 243, but rather the extremely bright highlights (like a person's white dress or shirt), and the same for the other end on the shadows.

So you want the brightest value in the image (whatever they are) to go to 243?
In that case, set clipping values to 0, apply "Enhance Monochromatic Contrast", then enter the output values you want.

http://monosnap.com …0Pa8DWDM0mcIxg2​GDZ9GSaPvs
http://monosnap.com …MNszxeIU0dEreEj​yQsjLRctXf

http://www.ronbigelow.​com …evels/levels3/l​evels3.htm

Like Rene I'm also puzzling over what exactly you're trying to accomplish (and why) with this method.

If the quoted statement is really your goal I would suggest using the Match Total Exposure function in Lightroom to "equalize" your images. Simply find the exposure you like best and let Lightroom modify your other images to match the first image.

I may be wrong but I don't see how modifying the black and white points of your images would achieve the same goal; it all depends on the content of each image and changing the black and white points could cause undesiderable changes in the midtones even if you use the Luminosity blend mode.

PixelMagic wrote in post #16072312
Like Rene I'm also puzzling over what exactly you're trying to accomplish (and why) with this method.

René Damkot wrote in post #16072244
Assuming I read your post correctly (even though I'm at a loss as for why you'd want to do this):

I'm not really sure why either! I have a very busy mind and I was just tinkering around and experimenting something. The more I tinker the less it makes sense.