The link Grimwolf provided is the one to read, but also check youtube if you need some time to internalize the process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dghCetkArJI&t=256s
You want to look for the brightness value in the color picker, but you can do some simple math to get the value as well. In this case 173/255 = 0.68 or so.
Only a 250 GB hard drive? Not sure if you install games and stuff too, but that's not too much if your working with large photoshop textures. At least in my experience.
So I use the transfer maps tool to make projection normal maps and AO maps. But for some reason even though I set it 1024/2048, the AO maps only ever render at 256, why is that?
Personal work. High poly model done with zbrush and 3dsmax. Rendered in Keyshot. About 25h of work captured and squeezed into a little bit more than hour timelapse. Timelapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mugbbtlkFZg
Also the normal map. Make sure it has correct gamma (linear) and correct value ranges. Incorrect gamma will cause these kinds of errors. The thumbnail for the normal map looks way too bright. If you look at a histogram, the red and green channels should be 128-255, and blue should be very bright.