ACR skin shadows

[Pantoned]

I'm trying to find a clue on why I get this strange channel separation when opening RAW files with ACR. The main problem is with skins, I have attached a photo of the blue channel in three different RAW conversions as an example. As you can see, ACR kind of "posterizes" shadows in the separation, and it's very annoying because even if the composite looks quite good the information is not usable in case of making black and white or using any of the channels for retouching. I usually use AdobeRGB 16bit but  have tried all color spaces and bit depths with no change, and the only alternative I see ( a part of using other converters) is to try the ACR calibration script, but I'm not sure if it would be very useful; photos shouldn't look so bad from the scratch should they? If anybody has any solution or workaround it will be very appreciated.  I'm using PS CS2 on a PC, Camera Raw 3.4, Mamiya ZD RAW files.

Arnau.

[skid00skid00]

It looks like ACR's black point is set lower/darker than the other conversions.

There's also noise reduction going on in those others.  Note the disappearance of the beard at the lower left!

[Pantoned]

It looks like ACR's black point is set lower/darker than the other conversions.

There's also noise reduction going on in those others.  Note the disappearance of the beard at the lower left!
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ACR shadows were set to default (non automatic), which yelds same results in the composite view as other converters, and yes, opening shadows definetly helps in avoiding the problem but it also destroys this original dark shadows which I would rather keep. I'll try to touch the blue channel shadow in ACR curves to see If I can find an adjustment, eventhough I don't find it a long term solution. Anyway thanks for the tip.

Arnau.