I didn’t really want to continue this thread much further, but I just had a play with a “quick-fix” method for highlight recovery in DxO :
Unprocessed
With Highlight Contrast 100
With Highlight Contrast 100 + Micro Contrast 50
2 clicks - how much easier do you want? 
Nice photo Joanna.
Imagine what you could do with this photo in Lightroom where all those sliders work as they should.
Just kidding….
Would it be interesting to know why those two are blocking local adjustments?
Because normal it’s not usefull to go back to older programblocks.
It’s clear that the Smartligthing algoritm is creating (edit sometimes) images which not always are appriciated.
Artefacs, bleeched low contrast images, disbalanced tonality.
On the other part we need a system / algorithm which can handle tone and contrast in a global manner to have some automated functionality to create the DR and brightnes setting.
Same with the tone and contrast manual adjustment department.
Searching this forum you find several threads commenting the present functionality.
(i agree most are used to LR) But i have to keep in mind that most profesional users are Adobe users and there skills and knowledge arn’t completely hang up on the Photoshop and LR.
Evolution and progres is mostly triggerd by external factors.
Being used to something isn’t the same as it’s the best way.
(For me i am quite digged in the trances with DxOPL sins v1 and grow custom to it’s working. Never got used to LR after a frustrating experience with v4.0 and i hated it’s grabbing of images everytime i place a stick or folder somewhere. They evolved also but there montly paysystem is putting me off.
Thus 100% DxO user and “lover” 
)
That’s why i am interested in the opinion on this matter by DxO developers and the why things work as they work. The vision behind it.
Different view, different way’s.
I agree with you Peter.
As I can see on the photo forums I visit (local and global forums) most of the members are using Adobe products (mostly Lightroom) and a lot of the rest are using Capture One. There are also DxO users but I think not a lot of them; at least not on those forums I’m member.
There is also a lot of talk about this Adobe subscription and the users who don’t like subscription are mostly switching to Capture One. I can’t say why. Is this just a hype? Is this just a misconception Capture One is the best you can get?
Or perhaps they tried DxO but they are more used to Lightroom workflow and Capture One is closer to Lightroom as DxO. Who knows.
Anyhow; I’ve tried a lot of RAW converters and each of them gives me somehow different results. Each of them has good and not so good points.
‘’’ It’s clear that the Smartligthing algoritm is creating images which not always are appriciated.
Artefacs, bleeched low contrast images, disbalanced tonality. ‘’’
Yes; this is one of those things I don’t like in DxO. Why I need to fight those dull images and orange faces without contrast. This is definitely one thing to improve.
DxO must be improved constantly. They need to add new features and they need to improve the existing features.
But at the end developers will decide what to improve and how to improve and which new features to add. If they think for example Smart Lighting and Selective tone sliders work optimal and don’t need improvements and most of the members of this forum also agree, then OK.
For me DxO is nice software and in general I like to use it so I would like to see some improvements. But on the other way; DxO is just a software and not some of those essential things you can’t survive without like food or water. It’s just a software on the market and if someone is not totally convinced he will go somewhere else. ‘’Just go and use Lightroom if you don’t like DxO’’ is not the smartest thing to say these days.
Hi Platypus - Answering your question;
Before this off-topic discussion began, there were 9 votes in support of my original post.
John M
Broken link : See here for an example, and further discussion on this: Loss of Smart Lighting Mode = OpticsPro 9
smartlighting is a curse and a blessing.
On one hand it helps to set the Dynamic Range of a image and on the otherhand it f*cks up some tonal curve ends which relate to saturation in highlight and deepshadow.
Same as clearview , to realy understand the impact on images you need to use and play with it frequently…
Same as color rendering DNG profiles which can trow you of track.
There isn’t a general setting for all images ,every time i try to find this “basecamp” it’s exclude images from a certain path to follow and it’s trow you off trac.
That’s what i learned in a the years using dxopl.
What I meant is that the original post has a broken link. The URL no longer works.
South Asian. I suspect there are more English speakers in South Asia than all the others combined.
