

Even the darkest coal has an albedo of ~4%. The same goes for the blacks, only black holes absorb everything the rest of the world reflects at least a small portion of the light. The whitest snow has only 90% albedo (reflectance rate). Most things we think of as pure white are actually ~75%-90% white (190-230).

Important note – for realistic results, the Diffuse must use colors or textures in the range of 10~230 on the lightness scale.

This seems a bit complicated for just getting a simple color in 3ds Max, but currently there is no automatic way to do this. Now the color of the material matches perfectly with the color you took from Photoshop. Set the same RGB values in the color slot and change the Gamma correction settings to “Specify” and make sure it’s set at 2.2
