I'm trying to learn to use the physical surface node. When I render, the colors look washed out. Here's a render with the poser root node

And here it is with the physical surface

Here's my material setup.

What's causing the color change?

Try making the color white instead of that pale grey.

Also make sure the normal map, displacement map, and roughness map all have their gamma set to 1.

It's a little better but the black still looks washed out.

What lights are you using?

There's 1 point light at 40% and an hdri of that hideous room in the background

The thing about the physical root is that it is PBR, works best with Superfly, which also means it will react to the light and what's around it.

To be honest I like the physical surface render much more, the other looks more flat.

To be honest I like the physical surface render much more, the other looks more flat.

I am using Superfly. I tried using different light setups. The only time I got a good black was when I had no lights but that didn't work for the rest of the scene. I tried that to make sure I wasn't getting any glowing.

Darken the physical root specular.

You can also try changing the Texture strength of your diffuse map to 1.1 and if that's too much start with small increments.

Darken the physical root specular.

Darkening the specular seems to help.

I can now do the rest of the outfit and he can be properly dressed.

Thanks so much to everyone