----- Original Message -----
> From: "Chris" <[email protected]>

> Seems as though the pink colours appear in my image when I disable 'highlight
> reconstruction'.

Yes, this is expected. The module is precisely here to remove this pink color.

> With this disabled the Green & Blue channels have a lot less
> data in the highlights than the red. Enable highlight recon, and it seems to
> scale all the RGB to a simple range.

The problem is the following:

* All channels (R, G, B) are initially coded on a range, say [0, 2^14-1] for a 
14-bits sensor RAW image. Channels that clip have the value 2^14-1 (well, I'm 
slightly oversimplifying because saturation of the DAC comes a bit before this 
value, but ...).

* The white balance module scales each channels, and usually scales the green 
channel less than the other. So the clipped pixels won't have the same values 
on R, G and B anymore after white balance. So, blown out areas are not 
white/grey anymore, they have color.

The "highlight reconstruction" module does two things after that:

* Desaturate the blown-out areas (done for all modes of the module)

* Optionally, try to recover details. The default mode does not try that, it 
just clips highlights and turn them into plain white (which may become grey if 
you apply a negative exposure compensation). The "Reconstruct in LCh" is quite 
good to recover details when at least one channel is not clipped (e.g R and B 
are clipped, you can't expect much on colors, but the G channels can be used to 
recover an L channel). "Reconstruct color" does more or less the same, but 
works well on different images.

In any case, setting the "clipping threshold" to 2.0 means the module will only 
work on pixels that have an L value 2 times greater than the clipping 
threshold. Which in practice means that the module will have no effect. The 
manual says "The default is usually satisfactory without any need for 
additional adjustments", which in dt is usually to be read as "There's no 
reason for you to change this value, but it's a parameter that appears in the 
internal algorithms so we've exposed it to the user just in case".

> Odd, because I do not get this pink appear when I reduce the highlights in
> Lightroom... and I am still using this same .dng file.

I never used Lightroom, but from what I've read, LR's philosophy is to do a bit 
of processing automatically (or "behind your back", depending on the point of 
view). OTOH, dt makes almost everything explicit, and gives you control on 
everything, including settings that are not really meant to be changed. You may 
or may not like it, but it's unlikely to change ;-).

The pink was there in the RAW (after white balance), LR just removed it for you.

-- 
Matthieu Moy
https://matthieu-moy.fr/
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