Quote - um, no, sorry for jumping in and being unclear.  i was following along until your comment about Dosch selling HDRI that only go as high as 1 (and maybe only as low as 0?).  how can it simultaneously clamp values greater than 1 and be HDR?

I didn't say the Dosch mis-constructed HDR was clamped. I said it was encoded in sRGB data values, not linear as it is supposed to be. The HDR spec says luminance is linear, i.e. luminance = dataValueInImage.

In JPEG or any other sRGB, luminance = dataValueInImage ^ 2.2

See the difference?

It's no big deal to convert from one to the other. But it is totally a big deal if you don't/won't/can't understand the difference which results in the necessity to perform conversions, i.e. to gamma correct or anti-gamma correct or do nothing.

You're supposed to be able to follow this simple rule:

HDRI are linear - I do not need anti-gamma before I can use it as data. I do need to gamma correct before displaying the data.

When Dosch did the opposite, you have to use the opposite rule.

With a Dosch HDRI is non-linear - I do need to anti-gamma before I can use it as data, I do not need to gamma correct before displaying the data.

See the problem? I cannot give you a simple rule. I've been through this at length on some other thread. "How do I know if it is linear or not" You know because if it looks stupid when you look at it - then it's linear. If it looks great when you look at it, it's sRGB.

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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)