When you say you "made the pops a higher quality", are you referring to the "Render Quality" setting in the Populator? If so this has *no* effect if you are using Raytrace Objects, which in most cases you should be.
Soft Clip is a simple form of tone mapping or "HDR" processing. It makes bright areas of your image look more natural and not "blown out". You get more detail in very bright areas, basically. We recommend keeping it enabled unless you plan to do a lot of your own processing of the image later.
- Oshyan