I tried software as well and I had the same problem, I was only rendering with mental ray because I forgot to change it @ctbram it sounds like a gamma thing. A few months ago I changed my gamma to 2.2 (it was 1.8) to make it the same as the rest of the world, do you know what setting yours is on? Heres my file: edit: oops, sorry about that, I forgot it embedded the images automatically