Quote - I don't use GC... I use Poser 9 and (could be wrong) but I seem to recall that GC is only in the Pro versions? Even so my renders look good as they are and I would need to learn even more to make what I know compatible with GC...

Oh, I wasn't posting that for you specifically.  I was just sharing information for people who do use GC.  For instance, IIRC, Eric Walters uses it.    I figure lurkers or searchers stumbling across this thread might find it useful.

You're correct about GC being a Pro feature.  Or at least you were correct.  The new P10 has GC, which I think is really good.  The only difference between this version's regular and Pro software seems to be content creation tools.  I think that's a fairer distinction.  I don't think everyone "should" use GC, but I do think all Poser users should have the option.

In my experience, the only time switching to GC is hard is when your materials or lights try to compensate for the problems of regular workflow on their own. 

I started using GC in materials after reading Bagginsbill's posts on it.  I never had a transition problem, because I always tried to match my properties to real world ones.

I don't see anything in your material that would be a problem in a linear workflow.  If most of your materials are like that, it should be smooth sailing to try it out some day. 

Quote - Also with the lights it usually works to lower the "specular" to completely black on regular lights and have only one specular light with solid white... this way it minimizes the amount of shinyness the lights in the scene cause. If only one spec light is not enough then on the "Main" light, (the light that fills from the front) up the "specular" to a medium-to-dark grey which seems to be equivalent to making the spec value about 0.5 or so...

Those lighting techniques might be a problem if you ever use GC, but only because they're physically inaccurate even without GC.  Real lights always cast shadows and surfaces always reflect (more or less, depending on the surface) what lights emit.  When you start messing with light properties beyond color, intensity, and falloff, you're moving outside of what's physically possible.  Which can be fun and artistically rewarding, but isn't necessary for realism unless there's another technical problem.

If you're finding you need to boost your lights on your diffuse without boosting your specular, that might be because you don't use GC. 

I switched to linear workflow because even material GC gave me more consistently accurate results than regular worklfow.  It made my life much easier.

The only reason I'm going on about this is that you've said you're beginning to explore materials.  When you don't use GC, it's harder to learn to make more complex materials.  You lose chunks of your gamut, all your calculations are wrong, and your bounced light is more inaccurate with each bounce.  It's a lot to work around.

If you've already built most of your work-around, if you're 99% of the way to where you want to go with materials and lights, then awesome.  Just pick up a tip or technique here or there and enjoy.   But if you're significantly further from your goal than that,  your journey will be much harder without GC.  The more calculations you add to your material, the more you have to compensate for.  Even if you're happy with your present work- and I can see why you would be- your present workflow could make reaching your future goals more difficult.  Depending on what they are, of course.

I tend to think of it as a translation issue.  It's like the monitor speaks Italian, the images are in Italian, but the renderer only speaks Spanish.  Similar, but not identical languages.  Considering our own language, the real world or the world we imagine, to be English (or some other totally non-Latin language, take your pick), making a render is like trying to take something you've written in English and converting to Italian working with those two people who only speak their own languages. 

Regular workflow has the Italian interpretting the Spanish like it's Italian, the Spanish speaker interpretting the Italian like it's Spanish, and you speaking a pidgin to try to bridge the gap between the two.   Not hard for simpler texts, but very hard for highly nuanced and complex communications.  Linear workflow, or GC, gives you a translator to go between them.  You still have to understand those two languages yourself, but you no longer need to fight the misunderstandings between them.

If you already built a hybrid, pidgin vocabulary and became fluent in it, then it's probably not worth going back to simple sentences just to avoid some consistent grammatical errors.   But if you haven't, building that pidgin vocabulary is a lot harder and more limiting than not having to.