Lightroom not clipping properly

When doing some shots where I want the background totally clipped, I rely on the 'show clipping' shortcut, "J". This highlights in red what is being clipped. However, recently I noticed that even areas that show as clipped are not actually pure white. Doing a mouse over shows that the 3 color channels are not 100%. Close, but not quite. Is there a way to configure LR so that it only shows clipped when it is truly 100%?

LR4 is working against you. LR4 and ACR7 actively try to prevent clipping as much as they can by rolling off the highlighlight values as Exposure is increased. There are curves here http://www.luminous-landscape.com …77413.msg619625​#msg619625 that demonstrate that. In this LR4 Exposure is fundamentally different from LR3's Exposure control which is linear and when pushed to the right will quite happily clip all channels. For what you are trying to do I would switch to P V 2010.

I admit the link you showed is beyond what I understand. What is P V 2010?

bone11 wrote in post #15891119
I admit the link you showed is beyond what I understand. What is P V 2010?

PV 2010 is the "Process Version" that was used by LR3.x and it can be used by LR4 by switching over in the Camera Calibration panel in the Develop module (bottom right side).

If you do that you can improve what you are after although some of the LR4 benefits will be lost (LR4 uses PV 2012).

One alternative would be to play with the Whites slider in the Basic panel and see if that doesn't get you a more "pleasing" look.

White slider is your friend. It''s taken me a bit to get use to LR4 exposure adjustment, but I like it know.

Also, keep in mind that in LR, the clipping warning is based on MelissaRGB, so you might not see a clipping warning when in fact the image is clipping in sRGB…

To get the clipping warning to be based on the sRGB gamut, toggle Soft Proofing on.

I tried putting on soft proofing, but it didn't address the initial issue.

I can use the white slider to achieve what I am looking for, but I guess instead of having to manually check if it's pure white, I'd like the clipping warning to be based on actual clipping, 100% or 255 values. Is there a way to toggle lightroom so it only shows clipping if truly clipped? Beyond changing the process version - I have to try that now. What am I giving up by going backwards in process version?

You will get more accurate clipping warnings if you press Alt/Opt while using the Exposure, Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks sliders, I believe.

As to the differences between PV 2010 and PV 2012, PV 2012 has some real improvements in Highlight and Shadow recovery, and I believe there have been improvements in the Sharpening and Noise Reduction as well.

tonylong wrote in post #15894408
You will get more accurate clipping warnings if you press Alt/Opt while using the Exposure, Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks sliders, I believe.

As to the differences between PV 2010 and PV 2012, PV 2012 has some real improvements in Highlight and Shadow recovery, and I believe there have been improvements in the Sharpening and Noise Reduction as well.

I don't think there is any difference in sharpening and NR. That was the big change going from 2 to 3 . The big innovation in 4 was automatic highlight recovery and the change in Exposure behavior (incorporating elements of the Brightness control) as well as the nature of Highlights (rather than Recovery) and expansion of brush/grad filter parameters and auto CA reduction. The main loss is in DR, but this is probably not a concern if you are intentionally trying to reduce it.