Ā Ok, so I kind of understand what the Clamp Result does, but Iām wondering: since blown-out values usually arenāt good (unless I actually want that effect or perhaps it is something emissive), would it be a good idea to just always keep it enabled? Or is there a reason not to leave it on all the time? Likeā¦ even if nothing is overexposed, could enabling Clamp still make things look different?
In 2 words, It depends. You'll hear that a lot. There are a lot of factors that adjust the final render. In some cases clamping the result can lead to colors that aren't as bright/vivid. In most cases it won't make any differences if there isn't any overexposure or color clipping. In some instances it can cause noticeable color shifting. Usually that happens when using extreme color management setting, but it's not the only way.Ā
I've seen the guys at the Blender Institute dealing with the math behind the nodes and I remember them saying to just keep your math right. Always try to keep in mind what you're adding and multiplying and try not to let your values go above 1 and you wont need to clamp. If you have control, you can always go a bit above if you want. There's a setting in the color management I saw a guy use all the time, that shows you the real value of stuff with no color transform added, it was either false color or raw? But it allowed him to dial his values correctly and not be clamping nodes, since it threw off all the math.Ā
If you have several Mix and Math Nodes combined, it can be important when to use Clamp and when not.
With some Node that outputs Values between 0 an 2, but that result is then multiplied by 0.5, for instance, that would give a completely different result, if you'd have Clamped it.