Adjusting MFDB images in Camera Raw

[evgeny]

Hi,

I slowly learn Camera Raw 5.5.

By default Camera Raw sets Brightness wheel to 50%.
The middle position of the Brightness wheel is actually 0.
This tells me that brightness may be automatically increased.

I actually want to start with original Aptus 65 images without any automatic adjustment.
What should be the Brightness value in Camera Raw when opening raw files for the first time?

Regards
Evgeny

[ced]

evgeny I think the value is correct, it is because AR drops the profile you used when capturing making this the main variable.
Try capture space as ProPhotoRGB and set the same in AR and the values are about the same.
You can compare both LC and AR both with the same file open on the monitor they look identical to me.

[Schewe]

By default Camera Raw sets Brightness wheel to 50%.
The middle position of the Brightness wheel is actually 0.
This tells me that brightness may be automatically increased.

...and contrast is set to 25 and blacks to 5. These are default position to normalize the rendering of raw image off of any camera. You can certainly change the settings to anything you want and save a new Camera Raw Default from the main flyout but I think you won't really want this. You should completely ignore the fact that the "middle" of the Brightness slider is 0. Back in an earlier version of Camera Raw (2.x I think) Brightness only went to 100 not it's current limit of 150. So, a setting of +50 WAS in the exact middle. No longer...but it doesn't really matter anyway since Brightness at +50 is merely a normalized starting point based on the camera not an absolute number. Setting the Brightness setting to 0 would NOT zero out the tone curve, just darken the image way down.

[evgeny]

Thanks!