hi ghonma

thanks for the effort, but I still don't get it. I'm just too slow.

Gamma Correction is all about getting more detail out of the dark areas at the cost of loosing detail in midtones and highlights. Just take Curves in Photoshop, leaving the end points alone and move the midpoint up (or down). This is some exponential curve, and gamma is the name of the shape driving parameter. Gamma =1 produces a straight line (lineair), Gamma between 0 and 1 produces a hollow curve with less detail in the dark and more in the whites (great for clouds), and Gamma >1 does the opposite (great for church interiors). That's how I understand it.

My calibrated monitor does not make beauty out of shit, but prevents me from correcting any image itself for box and tube specific hardware flaws. As a result, the shitty shot looks the same on all calibrated whatever, even when viewed over the net.

When I use photographic material to build a texture, of course darks and highlights should have been avoided and all texture areas should be in the same color range. My hand painted parts should match the color tones, of course.

Then I map the textures onto the object, apply lights, and render. And as a render is as good as a camera shot or scanner capture, it needs to pass the usual levels (histogram) corrections, and sometimes a gamma adjustment as well. And especially Vue shots can be taken with different camera settings, and can be combined using HDRI techniques afterwards. Great fun, all like photography.

But I still fail to see why I should want additional gamma correction on any of my (color/diffuse) textures after I brought them into Poser, and before taking up the rendered result. And therefore I miss the "added value" of this feature. Apparently it solves a problem which I'm not aware of, yet. But which?

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Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though