HELP - ACR clipping blacks turning bright blue

I am having a problem with ACR but it may be my cameras settings? When I open any picture for the first time, the blacks slider is set to +5. As a result the blacks are clipping in the histogram and some of the black areas turn a bright blue color on the display instead of being black. This only happens in ACR and when I click to open into CS4, the problem goes away. Also, when I bring the black slider down it seems to go away. Why is it defaulting to this raised black setting. It says it is "AS SHOT" and I have tried in both STANDARD MODE and NEUTRAL MODE and it sets the blacks the same way. So my 3 questions are:

1) Why is it doing this only in ACR.

2) How do I fix it.

Why won't it default to a 0 on the blacks?

 

In the upper corners of the ACR histogam are clipping indicators you can turn on and off.

When they are on clipped blacks are displayed in blue, clipped whites are displayed in red.

Your blacks clipping indication is turned on and will have a white box around it to indicate that.

The default setting for the blacks slider is 5. Under the Histogram you'll see the word BASIC. To the right of that, at the edge click the icon and open the menu. Click on Camera RAW Default so the box has a check mark.

You can now go back to the Blacks slider, move it to zero, click the icon again and select Save Settings.

Your Blacks slider will now be at zero every time you open ACR, if that is what you desire.

You can change the default setting of any basic slider.

If you want the original ACR setting click the reset to default choice at the bottom of the preference menu

 

Yup...what he said.

Also, 5 is the default for the blacks in Lightroom too...

Are you shooting RAW? None of those modes (Standard, Neutral, etc...) actually change anything if you're shooting RAW.

 

Yes, I am shooting in RAW so I guess you are right that they aren't having any effect. Do you find that a +5 on the blacks is good? That is usually is the first spot where the clipping occurs. Perhaps I should just turn the blue indication off and let it adjust it there anyway? If that is traditionally the best setting for blacks.

 

5 works for me a lot of the time. Sometimes I increase it (sometimes I increase it a lot, lol).

I can't remember ever lowering it...

I would just turn off the clipping warnings and go based on how the picture looks...

I look at it occasionally, but I don't worry about it too much. Sometimes it's best to just ignore it.

The picture I'm using as my avatar right now (bigger version here), for example...the whole thing would be blue if I had the clipping warning turned on.

 

I keep the indicator turned off and my blacks slider set to zero.

When I use both the exposure and the blacks slider, I often hold down the 'alt' key. Give it a try.

 

What does the ALT key do? I am not on my home computer to be able to try it out.


I have been having this happen for a while and never really tried to figure it out, I figured it was just some bug in ACR. Visually I didn't notice any problems so never gave it any thought. Once I looked at the Histogram ( shame on me for not using them more ) I realized what was going on. However, usually the clipping starts right at 5, so maybe it just automatically puts it at the clipping point. I will just leave it as is unless I notice a need for it other wise.

Thanks for the help guys. It is good to know how to change the defaults to whatever I like as well.

 

When you hold down the "alt" key when adjusting it shows you the areas that are blown out. So if the photo has no blown out areas the screen will start black. As you move the exposure slider to the right the areas that blow out as you move the slider will show up.

 

I'm sure you can, but I don't know how... I use Lightroom, so it would be slightly different anyway.

It can be done though!

In LR, if I couldn't figure out how to change the default, I could make a preset that would get applied to every image upon import - which would effectively do the same thing.

 

KMH explains how in his above reponse.