I think I see what you’re asking about, @salingo. Reducing highlights in Lightroom to -80 makes these red characters distinct against the black background. Same with the green and white Holiday Inn logo (H) and nearby details that are located to the left and up from this crop. But reducing the Highlights in PhotoLab doesn’t behave the same. It is a common misunderstanding that they should behave more similarly by design. Maybe it’s better if they are more similar, but they aren’t. To get the result you’re looking for, try this instead of reducing Highlights:
Enable Lens Sharpness and DeepPRIME.
Reduce Exposure Compensation to -2.66. Yeah, that much.
Raise DxO Smart Lighting to 60.
Raise Midtones to +40.
Raise Microcontrast to +40. (Lightroom adds quite a bit of this.)
Now, a very important adjustment: in the HSL tool, reduce red-channel saturation by at least -30. Or, raise “Protect saturated colors” in the Color Rendering palette to 70 or more.
Increase sharpness, since Lightroom is doing that as well. Way too much, in my opinion.
Now gradually brighten your highlights and tweak the other settings until you like the result. I think this will get you pretty close to Lightroom’s result.
Speaking for myself: I don’t like Lightroom’s output here. My approach preserves bright whites much better, though Lightroom (with its overprocessing) more easily recovers blown out details that aren’t white.
