Auto Adjust images when bulk importing

Many thanks to Greg and Michael for your detailed responses. I appreciate you taking the time to answer my question.

markf84217839  wrote Can I use an "auto. edit/adjust" feature in Photoshop Elements (2019) that will do an initial "bulk" edit or image adjustment that I can subsequently edit for individual images.

What you are describing, a global adjustment followed by subsequent individual edits, is exactly what I am doing in my usual workflow, for scans or photos from cameras.

My choice is to process nearly all my files in the ACR module of Elements, not only the raw files, but also the jpegs, tiffs or psd. What you are asking for is easily done in Lightroom, where you can apply presets at import time and edit either a batch of files or individual files non-desctructively. You can apply the same idea in PSE if you open a batch of your scanned jpeg/tiffs in ACR (menu File >> Open in ACR in Windows). You have the ability to define a common set of sliders adjustment for scans. Either you set it as the default for Camera Raw, or you save those settings in a reference file. In the last case, before starting the batch import ("Open in ACR") from the editor, you open the test file, click 'Done' and exit. When you have opened your batch, say 50 pictures, select all and apply 'previous conversion'. If you have saved the setting as default, no need for that reference file. All the files in the batch are sort of 'converted' with the default setting.

Now, within the ACR dialog, you can select  any single file or a subset of the opened file and apply individual edits, like fine tuning color for color scans, shadows or highlights, contrast, clarity, noise (grain) or sharpening. You can selectively crop (non destructively) to custom or pre-defined crop ratios. Once you are satisfied with your batch or edits, you select all and click 'Done'. Or you click 'Open' in which case all files are opened at the same time in the editor where you can do local adjustments, print or save in your preferred format, as a version set if you want.

Note that the edits in your non raw files are not saved in sidecar xml files, they are saved in the metadataheader of each file. Once a file has been edited in ACR, the next time it automatically opens in the ACR module from the organizer as well as from the editor. There is no file duplication unless you open in the editor and save in a version set. The edits are non-destructive, you can always revert to the default settings in the ACR dialog.

There is no bulk adjustment on import, but there are a number of very good adjustments that can be done in bulk once they are in the catalog of images.

Added: When you say "import", I assume you mean importing the scanned images to the Organizer which is the media library for all of your scanned images.  If you are just talking about editing the files in the Editor, there is an option to open multiple files in the editor and apply some auto-fixes to them.