In that example, all shadows (represented on the lower part of the curve), will be darker. The higher gamma, on the right, is typically better for movies and darker rooms. A low gamma, with a shallow curve like the middle, is more appropriate for bright rooms and non-movie content. But in reality it can be more like the others. Linear, on the left, is what you'd expect: A 1:1 ratio between the incoming video and what the TV produces. You can see examples of three gamma curves above. In the modern era of flat-panel TVs, it's ideally used to tailor image quality to room lighting. Historically, the gamma curve was a way to counteract the way ancient tube TVs displayed an image, and was built into the video cameras themselves. It's a curve used on the encoding side, like a video camera, and an alternate curve on the decoding side. But in the context of standard video, you can adjust the gamma as you see fit.Įssentially, gamma is the conversion between what the incoming video signal says, and what the TV will create. I mean, I'm not thrilled because it's my picture and you're making it look terrible. For that matter, you might adjust your TV's gamma setting (if it has one), to look more like the left or right image. Your TV, though, might show you something more like the one on the left or right. The photo is from my Instagram and my tour of the Palm Springs Air Museum.Īs far as I'm concerned, the correct image is the middle image, since that's what I wanted you to see. The above photoshopped illustration gives you an idea of what different gamma settings would look like. Note the difference in the brightness of the shadows (foreground), mid-tones (background plane and mountains), and highlights (clouds). Which of these images of a plane looks correct? This conversation could easily devolve into math, which is even more boring than talking about gamma itself, so instead, lets talk about gray. Getting to know how gamma and EOTF work will give you a better idea how your TV and video itself works, and provide a better idea what the gamma setting on your TV "should" be. And its current-and-future incarnation, the Electro-Optical Transfer Function (EOTF), is equally important to how TV pictures will look going forward into the age of high dynamic range. An obscure, behind-the-scenes process, called gamma correction, is crucial to how your TV has looked for decades. But that doesn't make it any less important to picture quality. In fact most people have probably never even heard of gamma in the context of a TV or projector. Gamma rays, especially in space, are super interesting and cool compared to gamma on TVs. In fact, in this context, we're not even talking about the highest-energy form of light. Unless you're talking about Bruce Banner, it's probably not high on the list of interesting things.
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