I would have thought the same, but I have noticed a HUGE difference when using the settings above. Its night and day for alignment, reconstruction and texturing. Right now I am religiously using Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks and Clarity.
Keep in mind i’m doing mostly interior models but I would say to anyone they should try to play around with these settings.
Here are some of the results im getting (I have cleaned up the model here using Modo, but everything is razer sharp because of the pictures.