Clipping and white point adjustment

I have been using Neg Lab Pro and have been enjoying it very much but have come across an issue with low key images where the brightest part of the scene should be detailed and not clipped.

This example image is a crop from a larger 4x5 B&W negative and is the densest part of the negative.

As you can see in the unconverted image, the negative is fairly thin and the densest area has good detail on the highlight side of his face.

When I convert the neg as normal with Neg Lab the highlights are clipped and I have no way to adjust the white point. Even if I pull the contrast, brightness, and white sliders all down the highlights are still clipped.

When I manually add a section of higher density in the image before conversion the white point shifts and the detail in his skin goes back to normal and can be adjusted with the sliders

Is there a way for me to manually adjust the exposure or white point which Neg Lab Pro uses when converting? That way I am not locked into the automatic white point guess by Neg Lab.

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Nathan will be offering control over this in an upcoming update, if I understand what you are saying. I am new to film and photography in general, so I might be wrong. I am sure Nathan will get back to you with an answer.

Yep. On it! Will be a very simple adjustment in v2.1. I also need to make some videos on tonal adjustments in general, as to date I haven’t done a great job of explaining the nuances between the current sliders.

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