No micro-poly displacement. Got it. Why-ever not? It's not exactly a "new thing".

meters are my normal units

La Femme is actually pretty light on polys, far as I can tell. But it looks like she was made to subd well, if it's needed.

Yes, the cylinder is low poly. Unless the subd is cranked, the displacement really only results in shadows, no?

There's still no explanation of the weird shadows. I'm assuming is calculates shading NOT from the result of a displaced mesh itself, but rather from independent math. The shadows still make no sense.

Imma go back and do this again, with a bit more control. Changing the gamma, as BB mentioned.

Also, I assume the resolution of the image map has a lot to do with it as well. update to come.