Sync Settings not working as expected in Camera Raw - Photoshop CC

I figured out that camera raw has two ways of doing the "auto" toning. One is slow and precise, the other is quick and approximate. Precise one is only performed on the currently viewed image, while approximate one is used for any open image that is not currently being viewed, but it's thumbnail is selected as well on the left. You can find this out for yourself by opening two non-dng raws in camera raw, selecting both with ctrl+a and pressing auto to auto tone them, then saving both raws (not exporting, just pressing done). This will create setting files next to raws (in case of .dng there is no settings file) which you can open in notepad and find that the settings file for first image will have something like auto tone: some hash value, while the settings file for second image will  just say auto tone: yes, indicating that this image is marked for auto toning but hasn't actually been auto toned, and what happened when you saw the thumbnail change on the second image was the approximate auto toning in action.

If we reopen our two raws in camera raw, and export them to .tif for example, first one will keep the precise auto toning which is precalcualted and second one will perform a new auto toning calculation at the time of export or viewing (whichever happens first), and thumbnail will be handled by approximate auto toning. I don't know if .tif from the second image is ultimately approximately or precisely auto toned, this depends on how it's implemented and would be have to be reverse engineered, but for us it isn't that important as precise and approximate are very close.

You can see how different they are from each other by clicking on your second image in camera raw and pressing "auto" again, you'll see the sliders shift ever so slightly as a more precise auto toning is performed.

So what actually happens is that this flag "auto toning: yes" causes auto toning to trigger, and the order of events is such that this is the last thing that happens. So if we auto tone both our images, and then change blacks to 0 for example on both (without actually clicking on the second one), what happens when we either click or export the second one, is that our blacks are set to 0 but due to having "auto toning" flag set to "yes", the auto toning is performed and overrides our change.

If however auto toning flag was set to a hash value, the whole calculation is saved in this flag, and the order of operation appears to be different, where camera raw no longer needs to calculate anything and just sets the sliders precisely where they should be, reading it from the hash, after which it will successfully set blacks to 0 before exporting or opening the image for viewing.

So adobe just needs to fix the order of operations here, so that any custom edits happen after executing the auto toning flag and not before it, which causes our change to be overriden.

For now, based on this understanding I created a workaround. My solution is using autohotkey script to apply precise auto toning to each image, one at a time, so that all the images have precise auto toning calculated. After they all have it, you can then make additional changes to all the images globally and everything will work perfectly. This script will take 2 seconds per image, which means it will take 6min 30sec to go through 200 images for example, but it's worth it for me.

Here's a link to the script: [Autohotkey] #MaxThreadsPerHotkey 2    running := false  stop := false    ~!+^9:: ; - - - ctr - Pastebin.com

To use it, have autohotkey installed, paste script into a txt file, rename extension to .ahk, then double click the .ahk file to run the script, then open all your raws in camera raw and press ctrl alt shift 9

You'll see a 2 second loading bar while each image is auto toned. If you have a slow pc and 2 sec isnt enough for your pc to do auto toning, you can increase this time in the script itself in the line 20. After all your images are auto toned, press ctrl alt shift 9 again to stop the script and now you can continue working with camera raw without this bug happening.

Same problem.  What the heck?  Last night it was working and this morning it's not.  Sometimes it's all of the settings that sync except for exposure or curves

I’m having this exact same problem! If I click on “ Auto“ in the basics panel and sync that to all the images open and camera raw, I then cannot reliably suncle any other edits to all the photos made after that point. This is really frustrating and it’s slowing down my workflow quite a bit. At this point I’m just tempted to just transition to light room.

Same issue with multiple selected RAW photos... 

-> I apply "Auto" adjustments on "Basic" settings tab -> adobe cranks up the saturation and vibrance (which I do not love) -> When I try to set the values back to zero, the software fails to execute , (same bug with three methods: using the pull down menu next to filmstrip (aka thumbnails), manually typing the numbers in to the boxes, or dragging the sliders).  Only clicking on the "Default" settings next to "Auto" resets the adjustment values back to zero....basically cancelling the "Auto" function. I trashed the Raw preferences and no luck.

ACR: version 10.4.0.976

Mac OS: version 10.12.6

Files: Nikon NEF's

I'm surprised there isn't more info/support/discussion around this.

I have the same problem. In addition, if the auto tone box is checked for the importing of Raw files, adjustments made in Camera Raw, are sometimes wiped out and replaced with auto adjustments when the Raw file is opened a second time in ACR.

I had a friend with the same problem.  I suggested he try an old trick of deleting his preferences file.  He did that, and it fixed his problem.

I have the same problem. I can't sync in ACR. I'm using a Mac with the latest version of ACR.

Rats!!

Hi Jim, thank you for looking into all this and posting to the developer forum.

I'm using Camera Raw 10.2 on Windows 10, and synchronize settings is working as expected. If I have multiple images loaded in Camera Raw and have them selected or highlighted in Camera Raw then the adjustments are applied to all images. I just confirmed that before replying to your message.