Having recently started using Poser Pro, I've tried to be a really good bunny by reading up about gamma correction and linear rendering on Poserpro.net. A little light (just a little one) switched on in my head, and prompted a couple of questions which hopefully someone with a brighter light inside their head can answer:-

1. What gamma correction should we assume to be present in the texture maps for our purchased characters? Is it safe to assume that they are not gamma corrected (i.e. gamma = 1.0), since earlier versions of Poser would not have had the ability to 'uncorrect' this value before rendering? Or should we assume that vendors now generally incorporate some sort of pre-render 'linearisation' within the shaders?

If either is true, and we want to apply gamma correction to our render output, then the textures themselves will be over-compensated on input, since by default the texture manager applies the same 'uncorrection' value to the texture maps before rendering. To correct this, we would have to override this setting with a custom value of 1.0 on all the relevant texture manager screens.

2. What post-render gamma correction ought we to use for posting our renders direct to a website such as Rendo? I understand that PCs using sRGB expect 2.2, and that Macs generally use 1.8, so should we use 2.0? (Actually, the Poserpro.net write-up makes a confusing distinction between "Mac" and "Intel" machines, but I assume they really mean Mac and PC).

Of course, it's always possible that the little light inside my head is actually a lot dimmer than it seems, and I've got it all wrong....

Thanks in advance for any enlightenment you can offer.

"If I were a shadow, I know I wouldn't like to be half of what I should be."
Mr Otsuka, the old black tomcat in Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)