I give up... Really SO few content creators worried about Windlight washout?

Seems that Windlight will soon see the light of day. Too much light, as far as I'm concerned, because I will have to remake and upload all my bright textures when Windlight washout (default, noon) will remain as it is.

Yeah, the majority of sl users seems to like the high contrast in Windlight, I've seen the survey results and blog comments. Hey, gimme more! But I can't imagine that I'm the only content creator who sees his bright textures being blown to complete white oblivion when Windlight hits the fan.

Okay, people can adjust their personal settings, but how many actually will? And okay, sim owners might change lighting for their particular area, but what if people take their newly bought products home?

What I want to achieve with this post? Not much, really. Obviously the majority wants Windlight as it is now, nothing can be done about that. But then again... maybe, just maybe someone has a tip for making bright textures in Windlight less overexposed. So alright, with how many points should I turn down my contrast, brightness and saturation in Photoshop in order to darken a normally beautiful looking texture for Windlight. Anybody???

You will need to adapt to a changing world, just as in RL. Either that or be outsold by the content creators who do adapt.

Yes, purple turns up too, in places and it's not pretty.
I believe there is one solution which uses scripts to change the important textures based on time of day. It sounds like a lot of work if theres no easier way but is a good idea anyway for other projects.
I worry way less about these things these days.

But the current standard settings for noon are not very high contrast at all? I have Windlight settings that kill textures when the light hits them, but the standard noon is pretty tame now.

Well things did get toned down quite a lot, so the bleaching isn't nearly as bad as it was.
Yes there probably still issues with local lighting strength and the defaults are still not what I'd call perfect, but...

I gave up crashing out on WindLight viewers, found a nicely patched client still using the old lighting model and have had about one crash in the last three weeks. I don't see me bothering to "upgrade" to WL until I really have to. Unfortunately, until then, because of the crash rate of the official viewer and me not using it, I'm not really in a position to comment on it any more.

And like you, I'm totally puzzled by the "turn the lighting up even more so everything becomes neon glow with no texture" people. I had a theory that some people with different graphics card / driver / OS combinations get different renderings in WL. But until I see an Nvidia and ATI class 1 card screen shot to compare with a Nvidia and ATI class 3 card screen shot, all of the same scene at the same time of day from the same location (and then preferably using a few different drivers!!!), I have no idea if I'm right.

** Note: I'm intrigued by this one, because the previous WL release (in May??), didn't bleach out any textures at all for me. But I know other people complained about it at the time. I've upgraded my graphics card twice since then and the drivers many times. And now I can experience over bright textures like anyone else! Yay! **

Edit: Oh and to answer the photoshop question part ... You could try turning up your graphics card gamma setting while you edit textures in photoshop till they look right with the higher gamma setting, then save them, put the gamma back to normal then upload them and hope... Insane I know

And of course .. if you do that .. and it works for the current default settings in WL .. I probably won't buy your stuff because I'm using a non-WL viewer and it'll look to dark to me, and even when I have to use WL, I'll be tweaking the brightness down so your textures will still be darker! Nothing personal! Don't worry, all the people who tweaked the brightness up will love them!

I'm waiting to see how it develops, and I am actively testing and giving feedback in the JIRA Database. I'm sure they are getting sick of me by now.

The most recent Windlight isn't as bad at noon. I did note that light-colored walls that directly face the setting sun are still WAY too bright with default settings. Why ANY texture should illuminate more under Windlight than it does when that texture is set to "fullbright" is beyond me.

But I am not changing any of my texture-making practices yet. If they release Windlight as part of the final client, and if it still causes issues with my builds or textures, I will deal with that then. Right now, it's shooting at a rapidly moving target, while in a small boat in choppy seas! Things change with every First Look release, and what worked last release might be completely unnecessary now.

Actually ... though the default settings are what many people will stick with, the fact that so many people will be tweaking them brighter or darker is going to make content creation a real hit and miss affair.
Are we going to see clothes that come in "Default", "HighGamma" and "LowGamma" settings to suit peoples preferences for how they see themselves and SL?
It's also going to make getting you avatar look "right" an entirely subjective thing. Who knows how all the people with tweaked WL settings will see you?
When islands and estates start pre-setting the environment, how many people will TP away almost instantly because in their viewer configuration / opinion it just looks horrible?

Having had plenty of time to think about it now, LL's insistence that we have highly customisable settings for WindLight because it's impossible to find a happy medium are probably very unwise for the reasons above. It would actually be better to have the settings built in (as the old viewer), even if a lot of people still grumble about the settings so that content can still be created and viewed on a level footing.

Maybe LL's trying to make people less vain? j/k

Anyway, I agree that the original WindLight settings made things too washed out (the original beta was even worse). I've given up fighting over what the default settings should be though since people's opinions vary so widely. I'm content with the personalized settings I have now, if some texture looks bad with them then that's my issue.