Thank you Dwayne!! To answer your questions:
1. Yep, set to RGBA!
2. I did not have Z pass enabled. But now I did and still ran into the same problem.
3. 8 for color depth. But I tested to 16 and still the same.
4. I tried both 🤔
Puzzling, right? The craziest part is that the render looks perfect. Is the saving of the image that is the problem? I tried multiple formats too, not just PNG. JPEG actually looked the most accurate, so I’m starting to think the image is actually right, and there is no problem. Maybe the checkered background is throwing me off with such a small change in brightness with the transparency.