The thing that messed me up with textures looking too bright was the import bitmap choice I had selected. Once you set your max gamma setting to 2.2 as well as the input and output gamma in max preferences you need to make sure your bitmaps when brought in through the material editor are set to use the system default gamma or manually set to 2.2 on the override. If they are set to use the images own gamma they will likely look too bright. Ideally you want them to show up in max relatively close to how they would appear in photoshop so you can have a predictable base to start working with.
