Apparently I am different from most in that I use brightness almost as regularly as I use color. I think it adds an important dimension to a show. While I agree that 100% brightness is too much for a whole show, I also strongly believe that there are times in a show where "too much" is awesome. For instance to showcase a particular prop or change the audience's focal point are excellent examples, or use 100% on the entire display for a musical climax or finale, especially for short flashes. It's the parallel to a louder or bigger firework. It's shock value.
Since I sequence most of my effects between 15% and 40% brightness, they don't show up very well on the previews. My work-around has been to adjust the entire desktop's gamma from my graphics card's properties. This solves the problem on the previews, but it makes the rest of the desktop pretty unpleasant. It also makes creating new colors for a new palette impossible, so I find myself switching back and forth all the time.
I read in other posts that previews already back-out the model dimming curves, so I thought perhaps it wouldn't' be too difficult to add some other options like gamma, brightness, and/or contrast to the previews. Or if there is some other way to accomplish this that I'm not aware of, any help would be appreciated.