As far as the highlights of the Blu-ray, there is almost no clipping in any shot if you look at the raw data in the file, it’s just that it’s severely clipped when it’s played. I can’t believe that it’s intentional, which means they just screwed up the encoding of the Blu-ray. I’ve been able to recover these highlights for Despecialized v3.0.
Take a look at the specular highlights on R2D2: they’re pretty much clipped in both images, but the transition from light to clipped is much smoother on the Tech image, which results in something much more pleasing to the eye.
The clipping on the bluray image looks much harsher, because the rest of the image is darker. It’s as if they completely screwed up the natural curve of the film.