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

[RonHope]

In older versions of Photoshop, in Camera Raw, I could edit a photo, select a batch, and sync all settings - or a subset of them. While I see where that option is in Camera Raw, when I apply it they almost never work. This along with the fact that when I select, say 5 photos, and then set the contrast this also doesn't apply to all selected photos. What is going on here? I even tried setting the contrast in one photo, selecting the 5 following, clicked sync settings and selected only contrast, and... nothing. I edit thousand(s) of photos and with this system not working my process is being greatly slowed.

Any insights appreciated!

[JP Hess]

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.

[RonHope]

I am using Windows 7, but should that make a difference? I am up to date with Camera Raw (10.2.1), Photoshop CC, and Lightroom CC.

[RonHope]

When I first open a batch of photos I select all of them and then click the "Auto" setting in the basic settings area. Which adjusts everything to what it thinks is best. It appears that having the photos auto toned is keeping the sync settings from working. Why is that? There are some general settings that I like to make across the board, mostly regarding contrast and vibrance, but am typically pretty happy with what the auto does outside of that.

[JP Hess]

I just opened a group of five images and applied the Auto setting to them as you describe. It applied to all five as expected. Then I tried to adjust the exposure, and it seemed that the selection had been released from some of the images. I select the all five again and tried to adjust the exposure, four of them adjusted but the last one didn't. Then I noticed that one of the images I had loaded was a TIF image. Premature results, I know. But some inconclusive results that you might consider and compare with what you have been doing.

[JP Hess]

You are right. I just loaded eight DNG files into Camera Raw 10.2. I reset them and then I applied the Auto adjustment. After doing that, and with all eight selected, any adjustment I make is only applied to the topmost image. That doesn't seem right, for sure. I will report this on a different forum where the Adobe developers pay closer attention. This forum is primarily a user to user forum.

Photoshop Family Customer Community

You may post on this other forum as well if you should so choose to do so.

[louisv54543927]

Here it is January of 2022 and I am having the same problem getting several photos I took for a panorama to sync before running photomerge. I just want to get the white balance the same. I choose the image I like best on top then command-click the other images. Clicking on the synchronize icon brings up a window of choices of what to synchronize. I uncheck everthing except the Basic -> White Balance box and click on OK. Nothing changes.  

[louisv54543927]

Found a workaround if anyone still has this problem. Highlight the image you think is best, select the other images. Change the highlighted image slightly, +1 on tint or something; then do the synchronize. All the other values will sync too.

[RonHope]

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

[John Gerecht]

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

Rats!!

[JP Hess]

Apparently the three of us have verified the problem. I have reported it in another forum, and it has been reported to Adobe engineering. So far, there hasn't been any any further discussion that I have seen.

[alh47022474]

This issue is driving me nuts!  any news on a fix?

[archfoto]

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.

[dibbler@windstream.net]

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.

[willied54110168]

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.

[lwdgrfx]

It's the 13th of October 2018 and I reached this page because I'm having exactly the same problem.  I've been using ACR for years but this problem has just come up in the past few days.

[shannonf62766736]

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.

[trish r]

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

[EagleshadowCT]

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 - Past...

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.