At the danger of just complicating things, allow me to note that CG comes in at two levels:

1 - the computational use of colors in Poser. For example with CG = 1.0 an image with a linear varying gray pattern say black on the left and white on the right fed into the displacement channel on a flat plane geometry should show up as a straight 'ramp'. With other values of CG it is convex or concave depending on the value. This has nothing to do with the rendering of colors on your monitor, but just the way Poser uses input data. 

2 - the way the rendered (or just any) image shows up on your screen. If the CG setting is not correct, you will see the result. 
Now that I am 'at it': How does that affect CRT monitors versus LCD screen? I had understood, totally wrong of course, that CG was a concept introduced to compensate for the non-linear response of CRT screens, and that LCD flatscreens have linear behavior by themselves and need no gamma correction.  

#1 is correct; that's where the GC witth Poser Pro is a factor.  However, the resulting render is viewed on a monitor.

#2 is correct, in theory, but computers continue to use the same colour space...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRGB_color_space

for those in need, I did a complete tutorial on Exposure and Gamma Correction in Poser, Vue and Photoshop, starting at http://www.book.artbeeweb.nl/?p=317 

The why, how, tips, tricks, pitfalls and differences between the various programs.

have fun.

Quote - To amplify what hborre said...

I hated it until I disciovered EZSkin, Scenefixer, and found out how to acurately calibrate my monitor so ITS gamma setting was correct. Before the above, I always got washed out renders from GC and was a high profice GC hater here in the community. After, I won't do without it!

pretty much the same with me.I also spent alot of time reading up on what BB and others had to say about it to get a better understanding of it now I love it

 Joe

I did not realize only Pro users got easy GC. It's easy for me-if I had to fiddle in the MAT room-I probably would not-a;though I do and did fiddle for such things as teeth shaders.

[quotel

There are two problems here:

1. GC didn't work properly in PP-2010, so results were mediocre at best when this new feature was introduced.

2. GC is not enabled in Poser 9, so while "pro"-users can tick a box, hobbyist users are expected to manually add complicated auto-GC shader algorithms to each and any material in their scene.

It would be better if the differences between Poser 10 and PP-2014(?) would be about content creation, not render quality and speed, otherwise merchants will always settle for the "lower" standard.

"There was a mention in another thread about the pros and cons of post gamma correcting some time ago. The final concession about it, by the time a rendered image is exported and Gc'ed in a 3rd party program, image detail would have already been lost. "

True. AFAIK while the newer versions of Vue have render GC, the older ones have post render GC that operates on the image at full depth before it is saved. Kerkythea's post render GC may work the same way. I wonder if saving to .hdr format for editing might work as an alternative. At any rate, the technique may not be as powerful or flexible, but it's certainly easy to use.

I found it interesting that what many consider scripture, Birn's Digital Lighting and Rendering 2nd Ed. only mentions GC in terms of adjusting it in post. Maybe at that time (2006), it wasn't available in most render engines.

When it was introduced in Poser it was, IMO, touted in such an emphatic manner by a few, that one might get the impression that not using GC doomed one to never sitting with the cool kids, and a future of dating outside one's species. Like any other tool, it is not a magic bullet. It may make some things easier, but it can't substitute for learning the other basic techniques.  

perhaps poser needs to ditch the biased render engine in its upcomming version and thus make gc easier when using materials,as well as alot of other issues.i myself switch between using gc because i also find some of my materials dont work well with gc on.

Yeah, as long as there's no GC in "normal" version of Poser, it's probably not reasonable to expect merchants to support it.  Not to mention all the older versions of Poser.

And I actually prefer the more illustrative look of the older lighting and materials for some images.

Keep in mind that you don't need Poser Pro to do render Gamma correction; it can be done in Poser 5; it's just a bit more work.  One way is to Gamma correct the shaders...

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2738989&page=1

The other is to use the Artistic Lens to apply it (about the 4th post from the bottom for the node setup)...

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2754029&page=1

The first is more accurate, but the latter is easier...

Gamma correction is not just for CRT monitors, its for everything that prints or displays color images. Having spent many afternoons calibrating huge $15,000 large format printers in ad agencies and art departments, GC is crucial for not only PCs and MACs but for printing equipment and even the presses that print the Sunday supplements in newspapers. If the ad for Acme Soup in the Sunday supplement has a can with colors that are slightly off, then the client is slightly outraged and you've only slightly broken your contract.

Is this horse dead yet?

Quote - Is this horse dead yet?

Neigh! :lol:

Realistically speaking, though, not many are going to do that.

Quote - Keep in mind that you don't need Poser Pro to do render Gamma correction; it can be done in Poser 5; it's just a bit more work.  One way is to Gamma correct the shaders...

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2738989&page=1

The other is to use the Artistic Lens to apply it (about the 4th post from the bottom for the node setup)...

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2754029&page=1

The first is more accurate, but the latter is easier...

Quote - Is this horse dead yet?

No.

Quote - perhaps poser needs to ditch the biased render engine in its upcomming version and thus make gc easier when using materials,as well as alot of other issues.i myself switch between using gc because i also find some of my materials dont work well with gc on.

Oh, hell no. Like all things, there's a tradeoff. While an unbiased render engine may be more accurate, it's also slower, and for some of us, rendering speed is an absolute necessity. And if you think the premade materials with all their faking look bad in Firefly and otherwise have to be adjusted, it doesn't magically get better because they'll still have to be adjusted to a new render engine.

I'm (now) using GC all the time and wouldn't want to be without it.

While one can get a pretty decent render out of PP-2012 without GC with just as few lights as with GC, SSS is truly boinked without it.

So, it is possible to go without it, but if you want to have the best skin possible, you should start using it.

BTW, it's always amusing to see how fiercly people argue over features that are only really needed to achieve photorealism, while there is not a single commercially available figure out there that would actually warrant all this extra effort.

;-)

"Is this horse dead yet?" 

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C.S. Lewis

In the modern age, sin may have devolved to not being on Facebook, using GC, liking or not liking Lindsay Lohan or who knows what all, but the result is the same - it never ends :-)  

OT... What is the image size limit for thread attachments? I'm looking at JoePublic's image and it's 1,700 x 1,000. 100 KB?  Just curious.

Is that V3? Think I see her face in there.

Image size is limited to 200k .

"Is that V3? Think I see her face in there."

Yes and no. It's one of my 3rd gen hybrids I built using the V3/M3 Reduced Resolution head mesh and the Standard Resolution 3rd gen bodies.

For this figure, I pretty much kept the default V3 head sculpt as it worked well with the custom body sculpt.

Near the beginning of this thread it was said that gamma correction is much better on a monitor with gamma properly adjusted. What about monitor calibration devices such as the Spyder or Huey (the ones I familiar with)? Do these devices do a good job of calibrating the monitor (I'm assuming these devices adjust gamma) for the proper viewing of gamma corrected images?

I do like to use gamma correction in my renders, but they tend to lose something in the translation to print.

I've been invesitgating the links provided so far concerning gamma, but the info, at times, can be a bit thick. It's going to take some time to digest all the info I've come across so far.

Linear workflow has always been a puzzle to me. As soon as I think I understand, I read another article and I'm conjused again.

If you want production results, you will have to calibrate your monitor, AND calibrate the printer.

Quote - If you want production results, you will have to calibrate your monitor, AND calibrate the printer.

AND find the correct profile for the paper you use....

Is the proof viewing in Photoshop very accurate for print output? I know I can add profiles to this. My efforts with Blurb turned out pretty well but nothing else has.

Sorry if this is going OT but I guess it is sort of related. I do like the look that gamma correction gives, and I want that look to transfer as much as possible to the printed page. Just trying to understand how to use the tools I have to get that.

Does this mean that for printing I need to render with GC off (but with the input GC on?) I've noticed that my printouts don't look the same as on screen.

Quote - Macs have hardware gamma correction so they have no need for software gamma correction. NVidia cards have a "sort of" gamma correction because the card doesn't actually sync gamma with the monitor.

 

The purpose of gamma correction is to get the proper accuracy of brightness and color ratios. For PC monitor viewing the GC is 2.2, but for printing (if you do have a high-end color printer) the GC is 1.0. Usually washed-out renders are due to IDL set up too high. Turn it down or, in-between buildings or indoors, turn it off. I rarely use IDL lights.   

     

If the printer uses the sRGB colour space, and I believe that most if not all consumer grade printers do,  it should look similar on both if the monitor and printer are both calibrated properly and the proper paper is used.

They won't look exactly the same because the chroma of  the primary colours of printer dye or toner is less than that of a monitor; that is, the colour gamut is smaller....

The properties of each type of paper is different (think of the difference between photopaper and "normal" paper). Each type of paper has its own profile - it defines how much the inks spreads out, absorbs it and how its colors change.

I have done many experiments finding out how much diffence it makes, and it really does. If you have properly calibrated your monitor, printer, choose the right profile for your paper AND you use capable software which can translate between color spaces (Adobe, sRGB or other) then what you see on your screen should be identical to what you get on paper (same colors, same shading). This is independent whether you use gamma control in your render or not. The reason for proper gamma control in Poser (and other software) is to do the correct operations on textures. You want the origal linear texture to be operated against, not a modified one. Having said that: if you don't care about the correct linear operations and have something looking good without it - that's perfectly fine. With gamma control it makes the operations more predictable, but the end result is influenced by many factor and this is just one of them.