What are your ACR default settings?

My defaults are blacks at zero and tone curve at linear. Then I made curves and saturation presets based on a few films. Porta film for people and Velvia for landscapes.

I don't know whys blacks are at 5, it just clips shadow detail. I got rid of that right away

V8Rumble wrote in post #6594468
My defaults are blacks at zero and tone curve at linear. Then I made curves and saturation presets based on a few films. Porta film for people and Velvia for landscapes.

I don't know whys blacks are at 5, it just clips shadow detail. I got rid of that right away

Hmm, that's a pretty good idea on the curve / sat preset for film simulation. I'll give that a try too.

Thanks everyone for replying

Usually, each batch of images from a day's shooting has very similar characteristics, so they will all need similar settings in ACR.

I take one, maybe two images from the days shoot, start with the Defaults in ACR, then tweak to taste. When I'm satisfied, I save the settings, naming them with the day's date. Then I can apply the settings to the whole batch, though some minor tweaks may be needed.

With time you will develop a preference for how to correct common image shortcomings. For example, with a batch of underexposed images (it's so easy to bump the Quick Control Dial, or worse, the Mode Dial, when shooting) - you have several choices for bringing out the detail: increase exposure, increase brightness, increase fill light, bump up the Darks and Shadows slider in Tone Curve panel. Bumping Temperature up can also brighten an image. A lot of ACR is personal preferance and the look you are after for you images.

The ACR starting points are just that -- starting points. However, I do have some personal favorite settings that I might consider making "default" values -- these are:

• Brightness = 44
  
• Contrast = 36
  
• Clarity somewhere around 35
  
• Vibrance between 0 and 25 depending on the image
  
• Sharpness amount approximately 45
  
• Sharpness Radius almost always 0.7
  
• Sharpness Detail between 15 and 40
  
• Sharpness Masking between 0 and 50
  
• Custom color profile settings