Hi Chris,
I am afraid you are looking in the wrong direction.
Your texture has sRGB values, they only have a meaning on a sRGB display. The moment you use any other display rendering transform apart from the standard sRGB, these values don’t have the same meaning anymore.
Search for sRGB Texture in the forum, you will find many threads about this topic.
I did an attempt too to understand the "problem. You can find my post here.
Best
Daniel