Here's another interesting thing to know.

High Dynamic Range Images (HDRI) are NOT gamma corrected. Because the only reason they exist, for the most part, is to use them as input data to a computer graphics program, they are not meant to be viewed directly, but rather to be used as data. For that reason, they record the actual accurate brightness, not a gamma corrected brightness.

Let's look at one of the HDRI's that comes with Poser 7 - the Pond panorama.

I've attached it to two one-sided squares, and rendered them in Poser.

The upper one is rendered straight out. The voltages it is sending to your monitor are in exact linear proportion to the measured brightness at the time the photo was taken. All the darker areas are too dark, because your monitor doesn't generate the correct amount of light in proportion to the voltage. Also, you're seeing hue changes do the relative amounts of red, green, and blue being incorrectly generated by your monitor. This image corresponds with what you typically produce in Poser without GC, or what you get from a professional digital camera where you can tell it not to do GC.

The lower one has been gamma corrected by the power 2.2. Thus it compensates for your monitor's behavior, and presents to you the right brightness coming out of your pixels. This image corresponds with what you typically get from a consumer digital camera, or you would get from a render with GC applied by the software.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)