Reply To: Confused by ColorRamp input values

Hey good question!

The thing is, what comes out of the color output and goes in to the Fac of the Colorramp is the RGB values and not the Value (from the HSV). What you were looking at in the external image editor was the Value.

You could also do this in Blender:

Just left click and hold and move the mouse pointer over any image in the Image Editor

If that isn’t enough, you can press N and go to Scopes.

Now look at the default Colorramp :

and look at where ‘middle grey’ is; quite close to the left; right?

Grey with a Value of .5 looks like middle grey to us humans, but our eyes are not linear and a RGB of (0.5, 0.5, 0.5) looks more white than middle grey to us.

If you take the Value to the power of 2.2  (normal Gamma correction value, if I’m not mistaken), you get the RGB values (when R=G=B).

Man, I am horrible at explaining this. Let’s ask Bartek Skorupa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVKnhJN-BrQ