I really need to try a third raw converter for X-Trans files to check this, but I don't want to install Silkypix and learn how to use it. Lazy, I know.
So I'm just wondering if anyone else has noticed this behaviour. I hope I explain it well enough.
I have some files from both the X-E2 and X-T1 where there are specular highlights. When the highlight recovery slider is set to zero in LR there is no clipping showing. When I move the slider to the left, the red clipping suddenly appears and only then diminishes as the slider is moved further. On one file where I have a definite gap on the right side of the histogram, when I move the slider to the left the histogram moves to the right initially and then only to the left when the slider is moved more.
PhotoNinja shows these files to have much more clipping than LR and is probably more accurate in this regard, but I doubt I should make much of that as the processing is probably quite different.
As an aside, I loaded these files back into the camera and the histogram shows quite a clear gap on the right with no blinkies, so I must get into the menu and see if I can set these cameras up to give a more accurate histogram. Some work for tomorrow.
David
Edit: I opened both LR and PN (pre-release version 1.2.3b) conversions of these in Photoshop and I think the raw processing is simply too different to do any valid comparisons of the way highlight recovery works in the two programs.
The clipping is mainly in the red channel. Blast and botheration! Fuji doesn't have separate rgb histograms yet. I still think I can get a more accurate histogram by fiddling the settings.
One thing at least. Once the file goes to Photshop from LR the clipping is actually not as bad as I thought and can be corrected fairly simply.
FYI, I'm trying to set up LR to give a competitive demosaicing of X-Trans files (compared to PhotoNinja) by sending a flatter and minimally sharpened file to Photoshop and then doing a two step sharpening with Topaz Detail and then PhotoKit.