Poser has always done IBL incorrectly - too bright. This drove me crazy as I would try to create an IBL probe with very specific amounts of light and it never worked right, always over-lighting my scene.

Here is a very simple test you can do to see what your version of Poser is doing. I'm not sure what's going on with SR3 or PPro - at the moment I have not installed SR3 on the machine I'm on. I have P7 SR2 and a beta of PPro. They are behaving the same for me, and they are both wrong.

Create a scene with only one light - set it to IBL.

Do not use an image - just set the light Color to white RGB(255, 255, 255). Set the light intensity to 1 (100%). Set the IBL Contrast to 1. This should produce uniform light in all directions that is numerically 1. The result is that any color you put onto a shader for Diffuse_Color should be reproduced exactly.

Now - Add a primitive one-sided square or a sphere or a box - what kind really doesn't matter. Edit the shader for this prop in the advanced material room. Starting from the default shader, make the following settings:

Diffuse_Color = RGB(127, 127, 127)  (roughly 50% gray)
Diffuse_Value = 1
Specular_Value = 0

Render the prop. Now we want to measure the color of the render. Click on the Specular_Color. This will bring up the eye-dropper color grabbing tool. Click on the rendered prop. This will copy the rendered color into the Specular_Color. Now Alt-Click the specular color to bring up the Color dialog - from which you can read the resulting RGB value. On Poser 7 SR2 and my PPro beta, the value is RGB(222, 222, 222). It should be 127, not 222.

Try a different RGB value - like this orange: RGB(255, 128, 64). Render, and read back the rendered color. I get 255, 224, 112. I should get 255, 128, 64. This is a HUGE error, and like it or not, letting Poser continue to behave this way means we cannot get accurate lighting from IBL. This drives me absolutely crazy. It is why I never had the proper amount of real-life contrast from IBL probe photos. I will be very happy if they change this.

We have to learn to stop compensating for the old renderer bugs, and deal with the correct results produced with the newest versions, if they're correct. If SR3 is still wrong, then I say fix it again.

Somebody who has SR3 should try this and report the results.

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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)