hi BB,

I fully understand the working of gamma in imaging, printing, displaying and the like, thank you.
I do understand that Poser deploys a 1) anti-CG 2) render and tonemap 3) apply CG cycle when GC is on.
I have found that when I create a colorcalibration texture in any image format, apply it to a simple object, apply a 100% intensity full white flat lighting and no tonemapping, my render result exactly matches the input when measuring pixel values in Photoshop, whatever the Render gamma value.
I have found that texture/pixel colors and poser-internal colors assigned to objects behave exactly the same, as long as the texture gammas follow the render gamma.
I have found that when lighting the scene with various lights, with different intensities and different colors, changing Render gamma distorts the relative contributions of the individual lights while changing tonemapping / exposure does not.
I know that IDL on skydomes or alike is a good way to mimic outdoor scenes, but falls short in producing realistic shadows from explicit sunlight so you have to add an extra (say Infinite) light to deal with that.

As a result, your IDL example with a sun- and shadowless underexposed outdoor scene might illustrate your point but still does not answer my question why I should use gamma (in addition to a properly set tonemapping) in creating well exposed, shadow-ritch, indoor (artificially lit only) portraying studio conditions. I still don't know.

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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