Hello, a question again: What's the purpose of the "Gamma Correction" option in the render choice? I think I've read that S. Kitchens (in the Real World Bryce 4 book) said it was better to disable it.I've tried with and without: the color in the final renders was pretty different. So, what's your opinion? Thanks

Attached Link: http://www.siggraph.org/education/materials/HyperGraph/color/gamma_correction/gamma_intro.html

Well in video, Gamma Correction deals with black levels and exposure lattitude. Too confusing? Here's a good link that explains Gamma Correction as it relates to images on the WWW. I hope you find it useful. ;-) FYI, I render ALL my Bryce images with Gamma Correction ON.

Gamma is good, but is gamma in Bryce good? The following pictures are rendered in Bryce 5 with the "out of the box"-settings. "A" is without gamma correction and "B" is with gamma. At least on my computer, "A" looks the best to me. I am a newbie brycer, so I have not played around much yet with the settings.

All my renders are WITHOUT gamma correction. Pic B looks washed out to me. Pic A is the better one.

Interesting. I much prefer pic A for the same reason as Aldaron.

Of course "A" is the better picture. Strange that you get those results considering that Gamma Correction is supposed to prevent images from looking both too washed out and too dark. Everything of mine that I post in my gallery, both here and on my own server, are done with Gamma on. All my work looks the same on my Mac monitor as it does on my PCC, whether I'm viewing it in JPEGView, Photoshop or my web browser (except the browser reduces the amount of colors). Are you guys using PC's or Macs? I wonder if that could be a factor. Hmmm I guess I'll have to do a test render myself, I'll post it when it is done.

Okay, here are my results. Rendered on a G4 450mhz using Bryce5. Render times included.

Gamma OFF looks slightly darker in my renders, but not by much. Quite a different result from what orn4rk got. I'm at a loss to explain it though. Are you using the updated version Bryce5.1? Just curious.

Hmm...quite a different result indeed. Yes, I use Bryce 5.01 on a PC.

It appears PC's do gamma correction differently. Win98 SE

Yes that is very different. So I guess it's Gamma Correction ON for Macs and OFF for PC's. I'm curious whether you had a difference in the render times too?

Thanks for your tests. My render tests (on PC) present the same results: better with the option OFF (more contrast). I've just opened the Real World Bryce 4 book and Susan says (as I understood it) that the gamma correction is a Bryce 4 standard correction (the same for all computers and screens). For her, it's better to leave the Gamma correction option OFF and adjust the image in postwork (with Photoshop or other). Mac and PC seem to have different gestion of ICC profiles, it's perhaps better with mac?.

It's funny that the manual for Bryce5 doesn't even mention Gamma Correction anywhere. I checked the glossary, index and table of contents, nada.

My render times was 13:08 for gamma and 13:30 without - that is, shorter WITH gamma. It seems reasonable to conclude that gamma correction is no-no for PC users (hey...another special effect). But we have only heard ONE Mac user, maybe Alleycat has the ONLY Bryce gamma compatible computer in existence;) BTW, the manual has a few words about gamma on page 307. starts to bleach his clothes to give them a colour more true to nature???;)

Ah yes, there it is on page 307, one paragraph, hehe. Hey I don't know what to say, my renders take longer with gamma correction ON than they do with it OFF. I'm starting to wonder if there is a bug in the PC end that shows it is on when it is actually off? Or vice versa for the Mac. I mean we are getting the exact opposite results. This may warrant an email to Corel huh? Very strange...hmmmm. ;-) I wish some other Mac users would give this a shot and post their results so we can compare notes.

I always keep it OFF, as I found that pics would look OK on my PC if I had it on, but would always be MUCH darker when uploaded here or at 3dc and viewed from work, or from friends computers. Some things I did were too dark to make out details because of that. Since I turned it off, things work much better.

Well, our results was not exactly opposite (except for "best choise") - in both cases the non-gamma was darker than the gamma. About render time...is it really that stable? The difference in render time is not THAT big and might be a coincidence. Being a newbie, I have not had the opportunity yet to compare renders over time.

You're right orn4rk, my non gamma is darker but my gamma image isn't washed out like the other two. I remember back before they had Gamma correction (Bryce2 & 3D) my images would look okay on my monitor, but very dark on my friends PC. I guess that's why. I could be wrong, but I think render time is pretty consistant from render to render. I can't explain why my gamma on render took longer, hmmm.....It just gets curiouser and curiouser. ;-)

I didn't found a word in the Bryce3D manual (french version). I couldn't compare rendertime (my actual image is rendering now for four days!) with the gamma off. As Alleycat says "curiouser and curiouser"!