valerostudio: I tried using the exterior highest quality settings earlier when you asked me to..like i said the problem was still there..what exactly do you think i need to change in the IR map settings because i tried a lot of different IR map settings and that didn't seem to fix the problem
stefanq: I tried that as well but didn't help
Panixia: I raised the HSph subdivs and the light cache subdivs like you recommended..it did help but when i saved to jpeg the problem was still there..so i guess the only solution is to save to exr first like you suggested then merge and save it to jpeg..i tried that and it worked..i couldn't fix the transparency issue earlier but it's working fine now..however when i try to change the mode to 8 bit the image gets darker..so what should i try to do now?..just play with the gamma and exposure settings?
Alright nm..i changed the method to gamma and exposure and that preserved it..so that pretty much fixed the issue that i was having trouble with and now i know that it had to with color mapping..that's why whenever i was trying to change other settings it wasn't helping much..
Here's the final image..it's little washed out..you were suggesting i change the physical camera and environment settings earlier but not sure exactly which ones..but anyways i can play with it and figure it out..thanks again panixia for the help, really appreciate it