Looking at comments in the critique forum, apparently it's the one big thing that everyone needs to fix. But short of upgrading to new software and new hardware to support the software, what's a person to do?

I also have to ask, how important is it really? Can most of us actually spot when it's used, or when it's used properly? Is it important at all for NPR's? Do I really need to GC renders that will be processed into toons or illustrations? Does lighting have to be perfectly realistic? Why does it matter if the shadows are little too deep here and there, if we're not trying to pretend that a render is a photo?

I mean, I read the rare critique that chides a person for not matching the lighting with a flat (not rendered) background, such that the shadows are cast in 2 different directions. And I always laugh when the artist replies back that they they weren't trying for realism, so shut up because who cares? But to me it does matter because you'd expect consistency in shadows in a painting or even a comic book. So of course, you'd want it in CG's , too.

But I can see, usually, when the lighting and shadows are totally out of whack. GC, on the other hand, seems a bit too subtle for me to notice. And if I can't see it, is it really that important? Or am I just blind, like the person who can't see that their shadows fall in several directions?

When you see a render where the skin blooms yellow, it's because that artist tried to compensate for non-GCed materials with increased lighting. I can spot that a mile away.

However, I guess it depends if bright-yellow skin is acceptable to you.

If you are indeed curious about GC, have a read of any threads by BagginsBill where he explains the whys. If then you still aren't convinced, enjoy your over-exposed, yellow-bloomed images. :biggrin:

Now I must state for a start that I am far from being an expert in this regard. I take a rather different view to you. I do think that gamma, contrast, white and black point, are very important in an image. If they are too far out of whack the image just looks bad, IMHO. On the other hand, I can't see the point of doing the gamma correction in Poser. What ever comes out of Poser I am going to put into a paint program, where I can play with the gamma, contrast, and other parameters at my leisure, the same as I would do with a photograph. Is there really any advantage in doing the gamma correction in Poser? I doubt it.

Quote - GC, on the other hand, seems a bit too subtle for me to notice. And if I can't see it, is it really that important?

I think there is an important distinction to be made there between what you notice and what you perceive. You might look at two images and not notice a difference in the gamma between the two, but feel that one is better than the other, and that difference in quality might be down to a difference in gamma, that whilst not noticed consciously, is still perceived on an unconscious level, and counts to how you rate the image. I very rarely use the actual gamma correction feature in a paint programme, but spend a hell of a lot of time playing with the white and black point.

There are pros and cons about this subject pertaining to illustrations and toons and entire subject of realism and realistic rendering.  I tend to lean towards trying to strive for some sort of realism.  However, I believe that the technical aspect of Gc is to correct a problem that has been around for a long time.  You can get a better definition about gamma correction from wikipedia, so I won't attempt to explain the concept here.  And Bagginsbill can give much better insight than anyone else. 

But in the case of a new user, taking Poser right out of the box and rendering their first image, and finding that mental image is nothing what is represented on the monitor, it can be quite disappointing and disharkening.  And that is because the image is processed linearly, without any correction factor and appears too dark.  Then the user goes back and begins adding lights to brighten the scene.  And then more lights until the render engine quits in mid process because there is too much data to process. 

Now for an illustration or toon, the image is taken into post production where all the corrections can be made to convert it into it's final form.  But, how much postwork are you willing to invest into a bad render to begin with.  If it is terrible, probably no time at all. 

The purpose of Gc is to render the scene correctly the first time (well, maybe not quite the first time) with a minimum technical wizardry and at the quickest convenience.  For example, at one time, users would create multiple light sets in Poser, which are tremendous resourse hogs, to fill every shadow in a daytime scene.  Then wait for hours to render.  Now, we can recreate that same scene with Gc, on a similar computer, with 2 lights and render in several minutes.  A time saver if you are crunching illustrations for a story.  If you can technically do it correctly the first time then why not.

I use gamma correction.  I can recognize it when someone does not use it.  The specular bloom in the texture, over lighting in the scene, fine details that are washed out, and deep shadows that are just too deep to perceive any detail at all.  These are qualities which can be found the realistic realm, but if you want to carryover some of those qualities onto the next level of your work, would you rather have it correctly available from the beginning than trying to change it in postwork?

You do put things so eloquently, HBorre - much more important detail and far better justification for GCing your materials (or using software-GC).

BB said in another thread that gamma-correction was a pro feature, poorly understood by the masses and so therefore not included in non-Pro versions of Poser. Initially, I disputed the reasoning behind this view. The difference in image quality was significant enough for me to be sold on the concept, and since then I don't render a scene unless all materials have been at least considered for GCing.
Why only considered? Because there are more refined approaches to correcting colours. Corrected-sRGB, for instance.

Implementation does require Matmatic and basically reverse-engineering your shaders in order to insert the corrected-sRGB node set, but the difference between GC and corrected-sRGB is quite remarkable, especially in those lower-light situations.

However, in all fairness to neophyte Poser users, a simpler scheme on the software level needs to be devised to prevent this cranking up of nuclear-powered lights because of a problem with how Poser processes colours. This should NOT be a Pro feature. There should be some default setting that allows Poser users to create reasonable-looking renders without resorting to changing materials for their entire scene.

I'm attaching the basic scene for gamma correction. Although this is the format of a .txt file, it is actually a .pz3 scene file.

Quote - When you see a render where the skin blooms yellow, it's because that artist tried to compensate for non-GCed materials with increased lighting. I can spot that a mile away.

However, I guess it depends if bright-yellow skin is acceptable to you.

If you are indeed curious about GC, have a read of any threads by BagginsBill where he explains the whys. If then you still aren't convinced, enjoy your over-exposed, yellow-bloomed images. :biggrin:

See, this is what confuses me. I don't use GC. But I also don't get bright yellow skin in my renders. So I actually don't know what you mean.

To be sure, my renders are not as bright as I might like, but then neither are the photos that come out of my Nikon. But a little color correction and curves fixes that in both cases. There's no need for a billion lights or for blown out highlights in an overexposed photograph. But then maybe it's that my monitor is actually decent enough to show some detail without using the thermonuclear setting? Maybe my images would look dingy and dark to someone else...

I have read a lot (dozens and dozens) of BB's threads. I wouldn't have posted my question if I'd found a satisfactory answer, however.

Quote - Now, we can recreate that same scene with Gc, on a similar computer, with 2 lights and render in several minutes.  A time saver if you are crunching illustrations for a story.  If you can technically do it correctly the first time then why not.

I use gamma correction.  I can recognize it when someone does not use it.  The specular bloom in the texture, over lighting in the scene, fine details that are washed out, and deep shadows that are just too deep to perceive any detail at all.  These are qualities which can be found the realistic realm, but if you want to carryover some of those qualities onto the next level of your work, would you rather have it correctly available from the beginning than trying to change it in postwork?

Well, I'm going to do postwork anyway because I don't have the hardware to render a complete scene, so I have to composite from several sources. But if GC can save time on the initial render(s), that's absolutely worthwhile.

On the other hand, most of the time I use 2 or maybe 3 lights if I want a rim light. I don't have the patience for more. So does adjusting the shaders into the monstrously labyrinthine things I've seen in the forums not actually increase the computational power needed for the render?

I have read this thread again.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2757170

It made much more sense after reading everyone's replies in this thread. Thank you.

No wonder I was confused!

So failure to GC does not, in itself, cause images to have blown out highlights and yellow blooms. Rather it causes the images to be darker. At least, that is what I get from that thread:  it certainly is the case in my renders.

But since I always postwork, and GC is much simpler in photoshop, I guess the exhortation to GC is for people who don't do any postwork...

And yes fiddling with hundreds of material nodes is not my idea of fun. I'd much rather render in 12 passes and composite with 10 different background sources, while creating a series of 900mb PSD's with 70 layers in each. I'm guessing the node gurus feel exactly the opposite. :)

Quote - I

But since I always postwork, and GC is much simpler in photoshop, I guess the exhortation to GC is for people who don't do any postwork...

And yes fiddling with hundreds of material nodes is not my idea of fun. I'd much rather render in 12 passes and composite with 10 different background sources, while creating a series of 900mb PSD's with 70 layers in each. I'm guessing the node gurus feel exactly the opposite. :)

...Or you could apply it using BB's Artistic Lens, which is a one-sided square primitive with a few nodes applied..  He starts discussing  using it for GC towards the bottom of this page...

www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php

After it is set up and saved to the Library, to add GC you just load it and put it in front of the camera...

 I'm a recent convert to both VSS and gamma correction. I like to use GC'ed materials now because it makes everything look brighter - I've never suffered from the "too bright" problem, quite the opposite. I was used to taking every render into Photoshop, make a new layer and blend that with the Screen blend mode. That made it approximately as bright as I'd intended it to be.

With GC'ed materials, I can (usually) skip that step.

I'm seriously considering buying Poser Pro just for the GC. BUT with GC'ed materials and the remaining option of postwork, I'll most likely wait and see if it MIGHT be a feature of Poser 9 ;) I'd say though that in most cases, Gamma Correction really makes a difference! 

I'm STILL not doing it right.

...and for the record... I'm using BB's light meter to make sure I get the light levels right!

When I use IDL and BB's dome with perhaps one shadow light, I turn PP2010's GC off, and everything renders BEAUTIFULLY.

If I render without the dome and turn GC on, all I get is washed out colors, sort of like in a watercolor painting. I turn off the GC... turn the lights up some, and I get wonderful, vivid colors. There does not seem to be a light level that gives me the saturation I'm looking for with PP GC turned on.

Since the envdome contains GC, I know it can be made to work. BB proves it to me with the results I get from the dome. I am just unable to duplicate it without the dome using the PP GC. It's quite frustrating, because I know others are making it work.
 

With IDL, you should be only linearising your colours, BasicWiz. Which means: what you do to colours before they see the Diffuse() node.
linearColour = Colour ** 2.2

You don't correct those colours after they come out of the Diffuse node.

Basicwiz:  Is Gc present in your material and are you compensating when manipulating PP 2010 render Gc?

The renders I'm talking about are Michael 4 right out of the box. I've looked to see if he has GC enabled, but I don't really know what to look for or where in the Advanced Material display. I see a couple of math nodes, but that's it.

The lights I'm testing with are Poser default, not because they look good, but because they are the standard and easy for others to duplicate.

Attach3ed is a shot of my material room for the test images. 

Other than the fact that BB is a freakin' genius, I don't see what's going on! Of the three non-envdome renders, I think the non-GC is far and away the best one. The rest are pale and off-color.

Now, I don't object to using the dome and IDL all the time... I pretty well do anyway. But what  bugs the crap out of me is that I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong with GC and direct lighting.

Any help or suggestions will be appreciated.

Quote - Any help or suggestions...

I certainly don't want to stop the direction of this thread which I think will be useful and informative for lots of people, but going back to the OP for a moment, I'm going to try to take a spanner out of the works - but I may end up by putting another one in!

There is no big deal with Gamma Correction.

(OMG, Mutiny among the Acolytes... prepare the gangplank!)

I mean this: Using GC in Poser enables the render engine to produce renders that:-

a) more closely obey the laws of physics in terms of lighting;
b) are correctly adjusted to be viewed directly on a computer screen without any post work.

a) is the result of using input GC (also called anti-GC);
b) is the result of using output GC.

That's the whole GC deal... no nutshell required. There is a choice which rests with each of us according to our own craft or art.

Basically if you want a more real look and for it to look right on your comp without post work, gamma correction helps a lot.  However if you'd prefer a more stylistic approach, then you don't need it.

Boy, did you pick a winner, my friend!  IMHO, M4's basic texture shader is an absolute mess. The initial texture map is too red and to compensate, a blue tint was introduced to offset that problem.  Also, there are no gamma correction nodes within that set; you either create it or use BB's VSSProp.  That's why it looks correct without Gc in your render.  No wonder you are having major problems.

First, Gc on the dome does not impact itself on the rest of the image.  You must have Gc imbedded in your mateial or set in your render engine (PoserPro, PP 2010).  If you decide to use Gc in your render settings, then any Gc nodes present in any material must be reset to 1.

Second, I strongely recommend you replace M4's present shaders with BB's VSS.  It will dramatically improve the overall skin texture.  Again, if you are using PP 2010 Gc in the render settings, you must reset Gc values in the VSS to 1!

Third, the envsphere is providing ambient lighting for IDL to calculate global illumination.  If you understand the concept of IBL ( a cheat, btw), that is what IDL is doing.  Except, it is calculating color reflectance of closely associated surfaces within a defined space (like a room or envsphere).  

Your last image appears correct because there is no Gc applied in either the skin shaders or the render itself.  And there is no image in you envsphere to apply any Gc; gamma corrected white is still white.  Think about it a little further, and if you still have misgivings, let me know and I will fire off some demo renders.  I am not at my home computer at the moment, so will you need to give me some time.

I'll get you through this, promise. 

Well, yes and no, Winterclaw.  The one thing we overlooked in these proceedings is the hardware associated with gamma correction.  The visual data is digitally processed on a linear scale which is perfectly normal if our biological neurons were genetically wired as such.  However, our range of visual perception is not linear, we see much better under dimmer conditions.  We see more details in the shade then we do in extreme brightness.  To retain that same dynamic in electronic devices, we skew that linear curve so that we recapture what we visually interpret in real life.

And gamma correction is not only applied to monitors, it is applied to cameras, scanners, and the internet.

Quote - ... the one thing we overlooked ...

No we didn't! (see above). :O)
Personally, I agree with Winterclaw that there is still an artistic choice: not all rendering is done with linear colour space calculations in mind, and a stylistic render may well be just as the artist intends it to appear (on a screen) without any explicit application of output GC.

Edit: ... although this is all rather hypothetical from my own point of view, as I tend towards realism in materials and lighting, even when not in subject matter!

basic's image may look worse after GC due to shaders containing GC nodes, as it appears to be
desaturated after GC.
however, this is something I also noticed with "VSS for dummies" tutorial - it looked relatively
desaturated on my monitor after everything was applied, than before it was applied.  however,
said tutorial is an excellent site that collects pertinent info in one convenient page.

p.s. poser 8 writes pz3 file with variables gamma (default 1.000000) and usegamma (default 0).
these can be changed to 2.2 and 1, and they aren't reset to default on loading pz3 file, but it has
no effect on the render.

oops! minor correction :
poser 8 writes pz3 file with variables gamma (default 1.000000) and usegamma (default 0).
these can be changed to 2.2 and 1, but they are reset to default on rendering/saving/loading pz3
file, hence it has no effect on render.

I Dont render in poser so I never Gamma correct
But it seems like this GC/VSS combo is mainly for Figure portriats
showing alot of skin.
is it relevent to poser users who Do Sci fi with Mechs/machines etc?

Just curious.

Cheers

The PR3 shader that came with VSS is for skin. Gamma-correction is a colour-processing issue, whether skin or mech-machine surfaces or whatever.

And here I thought I was making things simple using the m4 default.

I've tried VSS and abandoned it because (for me) it is too complex and hard to control. I'm more a fan of  D3d's Perfect Skin shader. (Even I can understand its interface!) 

That aside, do I understand correctly that unless I set up GC in my character and prop textures individually it is not going to work correctly? No one has flatly stated this before, (at least it has not registered if they have) and it sounds like an awfully hard way to accomplish something I can easily do in postwork as an after thought.

Perhaps it would help me (and those as literal minded as I am) if someone would do a step-by-step of a simple scene. Perhaps this already exists, and I have but to find the thread.

Lastly, I may be completely out of place here in this thread. The final render in my series is EXACTLY the effect I'm looking for. Is there any point in my learning GC or should I just stick with the dome and IDL? I have no problem at all in doing that. I just thought there was an easier way.

I kind-of did this one a bit ago for material GC, BasicWiz... if you want to have a read:
www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php
Pretty much a step-by-step.
I'll show you how you can plug most materials into it.

Unfortunately, HBorre's right about the M4 texture - you'd need to re-do the shader from scratch. Not really that hard, but it would take a bit of doing. The easiest way would be to use VSS (the tool, not the shader) and distribute your materials onto M4 thqat way instead of going into 29 material zones individually.

Basicwiz, you already have the means to render with Gc in PP 2010.  Everything that you use will not require Gc nodes within the materials.  However, if you use VSS or the Envsphere, you will need to reset their internal Gc to 1.  Why?  Because you will essentially double the gamma from 2.2 to 4.4.  Bad, very bad.  And this is the easier way. 

Unfortunately, you chose a poorly constructed skin texture in the base M4.  If you replace the base shader with BB's VSS skin template, and reset the internal gamma to 1, you will see an improved diiference because VSS is enhancing M4's textures.

This is using my own modified version of bagginsbill's IDL Soft Light Studio, available as a Poser scene from his web site. I highly recommend you download it and do a few test renders. I also use the EnvSphere with a controllable gradient shader which I usually have fairly desaturated, as here. 

There is something funny about M4's skin from abdomen down to mid thigh, but I don't have time to look into it right now.

There is a lot of talk about realism without defining what is realistic and what is not, and the definition is meaningfull and affects real world behaviour

I used to work for my local town council as the community artist. Mainly I would go round the town and paint what I thought people in the future might like to see of the town. About 30% of the time though my boss gave me a photograph to interpret, To make the photograph 'realistic' I put it through a procedure that would correct the perspective -incease the size of the centre of the image and correct the lines to the horizon at the edge of the photo. relate it to the wireframe of a poser ball.

the depth of shadows always needed to be corrected

I think really that there is no such thing as realism, only how we see something as viewd through diffent mechanisms..

looks st the 4 images provided by basicwiz, not one of them is realistic. Not one has the varirety in the normal skin tone so what value can GC be? and what normal man has that physic? Please don't take that personal basicwiz, the phenomena is pandemic.

Some of us are shorsighted /longsighted or have other vision problems.
The eye turns the image upside down and the brain inverts it again.

If we like a picture it does not need VSS, GC, IDL (looks at odnejay's work in sepia)

I think there is far too much focus the technicalities of realism to little proven end. I render very little because rendering removes the vitality of pictures. It softens and blurs and produce so little worth looking at

Good point I see alot of technical terminology and settings listed
and semi-naked figures in an empty universe.
that Look Different from each other
but none particularly realistic or impressive IMHO
I am Frankly having a hard time seeing where this  new rule of Gamma correction is creating better renders overall than  THIS four year old poser 6 render

but that just me.

Cheers

Wolf....BEAUTIFUL!

I haven't taken anything in this thread personally. I appreciate all comments.

For the record, there was no attempt on my part to do anything other than a technical render. My actual work can run to a Pz3 that's 500-800 megs, and takes quite a while to render.

My own evaluation is, I'm going to have to wait until someone simplifies things a bit. I have a technique in place that gives me the results that please me. I'm not hurting in that regard. I'll keep an eye on GC to see if it becomes something I think is usable. In the meantime I keep getting and filling commissions, and that's more validation than I ask for.

I will leave it to the masters here to get this technique to a point where the rest ofr us can use it with some level of ease.

Lazy SOB, ain't I?

Again, thanks to all  who have offered help and advice. That is the beauty of this community: the giving nature of the people who know how to help.

I appreciate it.

 esther,

Your results are exactly the same as mine.

Quote - My own evaluation is, I'm going to have to wait until someone simplifies things a bit. I have a technique in place that gives me the results that please me. I'm not hurting in that regard. I'll keep an eye on GC to see if it becomes something I think is usable. In the meantime I keep getting and filling commissions, and that's more validation than I ask for.

Note that if your technique gives you a render that looks 'pleasing' or 'right' to your eyes, you're already gamma correcting it. You may not be doing it explicitly through the GC feature, but you're still doing it implicitly with your light/shader settings and any color correction you're doing. This is something many people don't understand about GC - it's not a feature or tool that you can turn on or off, but an inherent defect in all displays (from a cheapass CRT to a $5000 LCD) that you have to compensate for. It's not optional. Doing it explicitly just means that you have more control over the final result and can tweak things better.

Quote - ...Or you could apply it using BB's Artistic Lens, which is a one-sided square primitive with a few nodes applied..  He starts discussing  using it for GC towards the bottom of this page...

www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php

What, a simple solution! I'll have to check it out. Thank you.

Quote - That's the whole GC deal... no nutshell required. There is a choice which rests with each of us according to our own craft or art.

Thank you. This is an eminently reasonable answer.

Quote - There is a lot of talk about realism without defining what is realistic and what is not, and the definition is meaningfull and affects real world behaviour

...

I think there is far too much focus the technicalities of realism to little proven end. I render very little because rendering removes the vitality of pictures. It softens and blurs and produce so little worth looking at

I totally agree. When discussing realism, I think that most of the time a sort of photorealism is what's aimed for. I see nothing wrong with that except that I've seen only one or two pieces of CG art with humans in them that actually look real enough to be mistaken for photos.

With the exception of a few highly postworked close up portraits, the works with the best shaders and lighting that I see in the galleries here manage to produce with a startling realism images of people who look like they were taken directly out of Madame Tussaud's wax works.

Poser bodies aren't even close to being good enough to fool the eye. So I do wonder at times why one would bother aiming for photorealism in an image containing a poser human.

I guess the images are still valuable art, in the way that a photo of a statue can be valuable art. And I do like to look at them. I just would never bother to try to reproduce the effect myself.

Quote -
I am Frankly having a hard time seeing where this  new rule of Gamma correction is creating better renders overall than  THIS four year old poser 6 render

Exactly what I was thinking. Suddenly Poser Pro 2010 has GC and none of the art that was rendered before is valid? Clearly that's not the case. But I wanted to know why and where the obsession with this new feature came from.

Ironically, especially in the digital age, reality is hard to find. Most images we see have been  'shopped, tweaked or enhanced in some way. 

IMO, the only thing that counts is the emotional impact an image has on the viewer. If there's only one road to salvation, that sounds more like religion than art to me, but then I'm neither artist nor acolyte.

*"As I see it, the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth."  - Paul Krugman *

Quote - Good point I see alot of technical terminology and settings listed
and semi-naked figures in an empty universe.
that Look Different from each other
but none particularly realistic or impressive IMHO
I am Frankly having a hard time seeing where this  new rule of Gamma correction is creating better renders overall than  THIS four year old poser 6 render

but that just me.

Cheers

No, it isn't just you. Most of us never even thought of or considered using CG until some 'well respected' persons started telling that you need CG and that your images are no good without it. As with almost everything in the poserverse everyone jumps on the bandwagon and follows the hype.

Personally I cannot say that the quality of the images have improved since we're all using CG, far from it. Personally, I compared my images and noticed that CG in the end isn't really improving them at all, there's a lot more to improvement and relying on CG will not do it at all. We can create stunning images with CG and without CG, but the better images shown are still the ones without CG. They've got lively colors, vivid colors, great mood and so on, something that CG tends to kill.

Quote - Exactly what I was thinking. Suddenly Poser Pro 2010 has GC and none of the art that was rendered before is valid? Clearly that's not the case. But I wanted to know why and where the obsession with this new feature came from.

It was there before PP2010, Poser 7 Pro has it also. It was advocated by a few people when Poser 7 Pro came out telling us images really look crap when you don't use CG. Funny thing is that the people who told us that and are very actively pushing CG are 'affiliated' to Smith Micro in one way or another.

I've noticed lately that a lot of Poser users believe that using certain features and extra's and at times gimmicks will improve you work a lot. It just doesn't look good without it. You cannot live without certain add-ons, even this thread mentions a number of them. Funny thing is that the best images are those who do not use all of this stuff.

If you cannot make a good image without relying on the extra's no one can supposedly live without, you cannot make a good image with them either. But.... it's easier to use the extra's, instead of learning to use Poser well.

 oh I have to disagree there.  I think prior to GC or at least that other HSV tone lighty thing, that people put tons of lights in their scenes because the scenes were so dark, but all that did was make the lit parts almost white and the shadowed parts were too shadowed.
I think it's definitely an improvement having the latest poser versions.  But even so there are some scenes where GC seems to destroy the richness of the colours, and make the skin grey green. In my example I still used an advanced poser feature which was tone mapping HSV exponential at 2.2
It did need that I feel but GC killed the image so i partially agree with you I suppose I am saying.
Love esther

Quote -  oh I have to disagree there.  I think prior to GC or at least that other HSV tone lighty thing, that people put tons of lights in their scenes because the scenes were so dark, but all that did was make the lit parts almost white and the shadowed parts were too shadowed.
I think it's definitely an improvement having the latest poser versions.  But even so there are some scenes where GC seems to destroy the richness of the colours, and make the skin grey green. In my example I still used an advanced poser feature which was tone mapping HSV exponential at 2.2
It did need that I feel but GC killed the image so i partially agree with you I suppose I am saying.
Love esther

That's exactly my point :-) I you know how to use IBL well (for example) you do not need tons of light at all. CG is an easy solution for too dark images, but that's not what CG is for at all, since it has a number of side effects as you mention also. People who really had lights in Poser 6 down well are still benefiting from that knowledge a lot, far more that someone who never really learned how to do lights in Poser 6 and onwards and using CG and such to compensate.

I do agree though that tone mapping is an excellent addition, far more useful then CG is and it's available to non Poser Pro users. Tone Mapping also helps a lot with too dark images, but doesn't have the nasty side effects that CG can produce. Tone Mapping brings out the colors, while CG tends to flatten them. I do use Cg on certain occasions, but tone mapping has been much more useful to me.

I'm not against use CG, I'm against overly using it and looking at it as some kind of miracle or an absolute must as some try to make us believe. It's none of that, it's useful in certain scenes and very unuseful in others. On the other hand, most of my scenes do benefit from tone mapping in one way or anothers, but not all of them. Each scene is different, but learning how to use lights and light setting is benicifial for all scenes, far more then trying to compensate with CG and such.

 I am sure I never got the hang of lights in earlier versions of poser (I probably still haven't). No matter how many lights I used I couldn't get my scenes light and bright without having oversaturated portions. IBL didn't ever fix it for me.  I also noticed many other people in the galleries had the same problem.  Most images were way too dark.
Love esther