Even if all 3 are clipped (e.g. shooting a landscape that has the Sun in the frame), and you read (100%, 100%, 100%) from the sensor, there comes white balance, scaling the channels (e.g. 1.9x, 1x, 1.8x), so you’ll get a non-white blown highlight. highlight reconstruction, as well as filmic’s algorithms, will then try to handle that somehow. For example, the simplest highlight ‘reconstruction’ mechanism will clip that such that the pixel has R=G=B after applying the white balance multipliers – not really recovering any detail, but at least avoiding coloured highlights.
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