See here for a related discussion:
I am not in the habit of adjusting black point and white point during RAW development. I’ve done it when using Photomatix for HDR, but in PL I haven’t missed that at all. I think there are many reasons for this - but the main one for me is that Smart Lighting and Selective Tone are so effective when used properly.
Full disclosure: I’m very critical of Smart Lighting since PL5 - its default settings suddenly went from perfect to TERRIBLE in my experience. But where there truly is unwanted clipping, it’s a very effective tool - and Spot Weighted mode resolves my complaints.
Selective Tone is tricky. It doesn’t work like Adobe’s version or others, where a highlight adjustment only changes highlights and black adjustment only adjusts deep blacks or the black point. They interact with the midtone and shadow ranges, respectively. But there are times when I prefer this in a global adjustment - and I haven’t ever disliked it in a local adjustment because I know how to compensate for unwanted effects. It does help to have a workflow that respects which tools are best for which job - there are so many ways to adjust contrast and exposure, but not all are equal for a given need.
A few tips that work for me:
When lowering highlights, you might also want to raise midtones.
Blacks and Shadows also interact in this way to some extent.
The histogram is useful, but nothing beats a well-calibrated monitor.
Get to know your Color Rendering adjustments! This is powerful and too often taken for granted. I usually start with setting this before moving on to shadows and highlights.
Don’t make it a goal to eliminate all clipping warnings. A warning doesn’t mean that there truly is clipping - only that a threshold is being hit in one or more of the color channels.
Use ClearView Plus minimally. When applying it, consider turning off Smart Lighting and raising Midtones a bit. Sometimes, a small amount of microcontrast or (with a FilmPack license) fine contrast will do a better job if you want to preserve a bit of haze and keep colors in the shadows-midtones from shifting/oversaturating.
I admit that I might prefer another program’s workflow in many cases. But I generally prefer PL’s results.