Tonality

[faberryman]

There is a glossary of photography terms on the Ansel Adams Gallery website which defines tonality as follows:

"Tonality refers to both the hue of a black and white photograph and the gradation of black to white throughout the photograph."

If you want to measure the tones in a print, I'd suggest using a reflection densitometer. If you want to measure tones in a negative, I'd suggest using a transmission densitometer. If you are working digitally, Lightroom has a tool you can use to measure tones on a scale of 0-255. Other digital editing programs probably have similar tools.

 

[Nicholas Lindan]

Maybe 'tonality' is like pornography: "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." - United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart

As near as I can discern, 'tonality' is just another way of saying 'I like it' but trying to frame it in objective terms. But as there is no objective criteria for 'tonality,' and there is no need to justify one's taste, I find 'I like it' to be the more compelling statement.

 

[Vaughn]

To keep it simple, I think of tonality as the arrangement of light values on a print.

"Good' tonality serves the image and what the photographer is trying to do with the image. "Bad' tonality fails to do so. An image with just pure blacks and pure whites can have excellent tonality, if that is what the photographer/image requires.

 

[Ian Grant]

My working definition: "Tonality" is the result of trying to reduce to words that which isn't well suited to words.
One thing that tonality is not is a reference to a range of tones. Instead, it is a reference to how the tones progress through that range. On more than one occasion I've had side by side two prints evidencing similar ranges of tones, where one print achieves that range in a more visually satisfying way.
It is the transition between tones that seems to have the greatest affect. And sadly, it is difficult to show tonality differences in prints on a screen.

One thing that tonality is not is a reference to a range of tones. Instead, it is a reference to how the tones progress through that range.

There's an Oxymoron in that statement Matt, because for tones to progress through a range, that is a range of tones. Perhaps put a better way what I think you mean would be, similar to what I meant when saying: "essentially how many discernible shades of grey we can see between white and black".

Tonality is a reference to the range of tones, and more specifically the discernible incremental steps and visible changes as the tones progress through that range, which we refer to as Gradation.

There is a glossary of photography terms on the Ansel Adams Gallery website which defines tonality as follows:

"Tonality refers to both the hue of a black and white photograph and the gradation of black to white throughout the photograph."

That has always been the definition I've used, long before I heard of Ansel Adams.

Ian

 

[Sirius Glass]

This is what I expect from a film and developer, Kodak Tri-X 400 @ ISO 400 developed in replenished XTOL, in great tonality. Notice the smoothness of the tones in each individual sheet of metal. Hasselblad 903 SWC. And do not say that I never post anything again.

 

[faberryman]

And do not say that I never post anything again.

The mystery is over.

 

[NB23]

Tonality for sure means “endless grays” to some. Not to me.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

This is what I expect from a film and developer, Kodak Tri-X 400 @ ISO 400 developed in replenished XTOL, in great tonality. Notice the smoothness of the tones in each individual sheet of metal. Hasselblad 903 SWC. And do not say that I never post anything again. View attachment 323435 View attachment 323436 View attachment 323437 View attachment 323438 View attachment 323439

Nice tones.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Nice tones.

Yes, I get out and exercise regularly to keep my body tone up.

 

[snusmumriken]

Tonality for sure means “endless grays” to some. Not to me.

You’ll need to expand that a bit for me. Ever seen a platinum print by Irving Penn?

 

[snusmumriken]

Tonality for sure means “endless grays” to some. Not to me.

I mean, I’m not trying to goad you, but there is a kind of photograph that takes your breath away with the sheer beauty of the medium. I suspect you like raw and punchy (?), which is great too, but doesn’t have a lot to do with the OP’s question.

 

[NB23]

I mean, I’m not trying to goad you, but there is a kind of photograph that takes your breath away with the sheer beauty of the medium. I suspect you like raw and punchy (?), which is great too, but doesn’t have a lot to do with the OP’s question.

Isn’t it Ansel Adams that did not use XTol?

 

[Sirius Glass]

Isn’t it Ansel Adams that did not use XTol?

Because XTOL did not exist when he was alive. That is like complaining that the Egyptian Pharaohs did not use panoramic films.

 

[NB23]

Because XTOL did not exist when he was alive. That is like complaining that the Egyptian Pharaohs did not use panoramic films.

Still, the math is clear: people venerate his work which was not done with Xtol.

 

[L Gebhardt]

Alan, I think "good tonality" has to do with more mid-tones and tones throughout the spectrum as opposed to more contrasty pictures where the blacks and whites are highlighted.

Here are two examples I selected. Tonal 1: I would consider good tonality and Tonal 2 has more contrast, less tonality. I inserted their histograms as I think that would show measurable quantities. It would be interesting to look at histograms for other pictures to see how the histograms might show tonal appreciation in a more scientific way instead of just stating what we feel in an intuitive way.

Also, note that my samples were selected based on my interpretations of what I think the terms mean. So others may feel different pictures better show these characteristics.

I altered your Tonal 1 image with Unsharp Mask with a low amount and high radius. I think it significantly changes the tonality (note the embedded histogram was not updated). In this case it's showing an increase in local area contrast without increasing edge contrast. You can get a similar contrast effect with traditional unsharp masks in the darkroom with a strong diffusion layer.

Note I'm not claiming this is an example of good or bad tonality, just that I local contrast changes can affect the feel of an image's tonality.

 

[albireo]

What an interesting topic.

I had always interpreted "tonality" in a black and white print or scan to be a mapping - a function if you will, mapping the colours and luminosity in the scene seen, which is always in colour, to a set of greys.

In my view, the choice of this mapping is entirely personal, artistic, and (mostly) controllable: as the world is in colour, there is no universally 'correct' greyscale mapping of it. There are however, mappings that are possibly more pleasant than others for a large majority of the population (I wonder if there is perceptual research backing this) and so perhaps the expression 'good tonality!' means, for some:

'Hey! I intuitively like how you chose to map the colours you saw in the scene to this particular distribution of grey scale values = good tonality!'.

Importantly, in my (no doubt personal) interpretation, this mapping is not about the absolute "range" or 'completeness' of tones included. That is, 'good' tonality is not necessarily about how many shades of gray I can fit in. In fact, as suggested by others, smooth tonality ("many shades of grey", ie distribution of tones in the histogram that tends to uniform) might fit some images whereas 'high contrast' (very heavy tailed histogram, loads of density in peaks, heavy tails of near blacks and near whites) might fit another image.

In my understanding, tonality refers instead to the choice of exactly which particular grey level in the available range should the photographer pick to represent any chosen colour "items" in the scene.

Eg let's think for simplicity at a discretised grayscale palette. Let's say we have a scanner able to digitise at 14bits/pixel. This gives us 16,384 values to chose from as the destination grey, with 0 being absolute black and 16.383 being absolute white.

We take a picture containing a red apple and a banana. Our task is to map the red and the yellow to pleasant grey values in the [0, 16,383] range. How do we pick? We have a few variables at hand

1. lighting of the scene
2. any filters?
3. film
4. developer
5. exposure time
6. exposure methods
7. processing time
8. processing temperature
9. choice of scanner/enlarger head
10. choice of paper
11. ...

With these tools at hand we can then take a decision on how to map that red and that yellow to some grey between 0 and 16,383. Do we want

1. the red to be very dark, much closer to the black background than to the yellow? [eg apple= 200, banana= 6000]
2. the red to be a very similar shade of gray as the yellow, both far from the black background? [eg apple= 4560, banana= 6000]
3. the yellow to be very fair, close to white, as far as possible from the black? [ eg banana= 12000]
4. both objects to be very fair as far as possible from the black background? [eg apple = 10235, banana = 12000]
5. something else?

I believe the outcome of the decision leading to the mapping of those colours to certain grey shades will be relevant to the viewer, who will then express a judgement on a 'good/poor tonality'. I believe we carry expectations on what shade of grey should most objects be represented with to be vaguely 'correct'. I think the brain strives to look for correctness even when evaluating a BW image.

So perhaps 'poor tonality' in the example above would be an image in which the banana grey is very close to the apple grey, as our brain struggles to fit that against a colour representation of the scene (we know that a red apple is extremely different from a yellow banana in the real world).

A few examples from flickr

example 1

example 2

example 3

example 4

example 5


There are two images here that I would consider prime examples of 'poor tonality'. The remaining three I would pick as examples of good tonality. Would be interesting to do this properly and perform some kind of blind rating to see if we reach some sort of consensus.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Yes, I get out and exercise regularly to keep my body tone up.

Don't get fresh.

 

[MattKing]

There's an Oxymoron in that statement Matt, because for tones to progress through a range, that is a range of tones.

No oxymoron Ian, because the critical part of my observation is the word "how".
It isn't how many tones, it is how the tones transition. As you say, the gradation.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I altered your Tonal 1 image with Unsharp Mask with a low amount and high radius. I think it significantly changes the tonality (note the embedded histogram was not updated). In this case it's showing an increase in local area contrast without increasing edge contrast. You can get a similar contrast effect with traditional unsharp masks in the darkroom with a strong diffusion layer.

Note I'm not claiming this is an example of good or bad tonality, just that I local contrast changes can affect the feel of an image's tonality.

Here is my original Tonal1 with histogram and yours Tonal 1 Modified with histogram to compare. What do others think?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

What an interesting topic.

I had always interpreted "tonality" in a black and white print or scan to be a mapping - a function if you will, mapping the colours and luminosity in the scene seen, which is always in colour, to a set of greys.

In my view, the choice of this mapping is entirely personal, artistic, and (mostly) controllable: as the world is in colour, there is no universally 'correct' greyscale mapping of it. There are however, mappings that are possibly more pleasant than others for a large majority of the population (I wonder if there is perceptual research backing this) and so perhaps the expression 'good tonality!' means, for some:

'Hey! I intuitively like how you chose to map the colours you saw in the scene to this particular distribution of grey scale values = good tonality!'.

Importantly, in my (no doubt personal) interpretation, this mapping is not about the absolute "range" or 'completeness' of tones included. That is, 'good' tonality is not necessarily about how many shades of gray I can fit in. In fact, as suggested by others, smooth tonality ("many shades of grey", ie distribution of tones in the histogram that tends to uniform) might fit some images whereas 'high contrast' (very heavy tailed histogram, loads of density in peaks, heavy tails of near blacks and near whites) might fit another image.

In my understanding, tonality refers instead to the choice of exactly which particular grey level in the available range should the photographer pick to represent any chosen colour "items" in the scene.

Eg let's think for simplicity at a discretised grayscale palette. Let's say we have a scanner able to digitise at 14bits/pixel. This gives us 16,384 values to chose from as the destination grey, with 0 being absolute black and 16.383 being absolute white.

We take a picture containing a red apple and a banana. Our task is to map the red and the yellow to pleasant grey values in the [0, 16,383] range. How do we pick? We have a few variables at hand

1. lighting of the scene
2. any filters?
3. film
4. developer
5. exposure time
6. exposure methods
7. processing time
8. processing temperature
9. choice of scanner/enlarger head
10. choice of paper
11. ...

With these tools at hand we can then take a decision on how to map that red and that yellow to some grey between 0 and 16,383. Do we want

1. the red to be very dark, much closer to the black background than to the yellow? [eg apple= 200, banana= 6000]
2. the red to be a very similar shade of gray as the yellow, both far from the black background? [eg apple= 4560, banana= 6000]
3. the yellow to be very fair, close to white, as far as possible from the black? [ eg banana= 12000]
4. both objects to be very fair as far as possible from the black background? [eg apple = 10235, banana = 12000]
5. something else?

I believe the outcome of the decision leading to the mapping of those colours to certain grey shades will be relevant to the viewer, who will then express a judgement on a 'good/poor tonality'. I believe we carry expectations on what shade of grey should most objects be represented with to be vaguely 'correct'. I think the brain strives to look for correctness even when evaluating a BW image.

So perhaps 'poor tonality' in the example above would be an image in which the banana grey is very close to the apple grey, as our brain struggles to fit that against a colour representation of the scene (we know that a red apple is extremely different from a yellow banana in the real world).

A few examples from flickr

example 1

example 2

example 3

example 4

example 5


There are two images here that I would consider prime examples of 'poor tonality'. The remaining three I would pick as examples of good tonality. Would be interesting to do this properly and perform some kind of blind rating to see if we reach some sort of consensus.

2 is out and 5 is just too dark. 1,3 and 4 have nice tones. What do others think?

 

[runswithsizzers]

What an interesting topic.

I had always interpreted "tonality" in a black and white print or scan to be a mapping - a function if you will, mapping the colours and luminosity in the scene seen, which is always in colour, to a set of greys.

In my view, the choice of this mapping is entirely personal, artistic, and (mostly) controllable: as the world is in colour, there is no universally 'correct' greyscale mapping of it. There are however, mappings that are possibly more pleasant than others for a large majority of the population (I wonder if there is perceptual research backing this) and so perhaps the expression 'good tonality!' means, for some:

'Hey! I intuitively like how you chose to map the colours you saw in the scene to this particular distribution of grey scale values = good tonality!'.

Importantly, in my (no doubt personal) interpretation, this mapping is not about the absolute "range" or 'completeness' of tones included. That is, 'good' tonality is not necessarily about how many shades of gray I can fit in. In fact, as suggested by others, smooth tonality ("many shades of grey", ie distribution of tones in the histogram that tends to uniform) might fit some images whereas 'high contrast' (very heavy tailed histogram, loads of density in peaks, heavy tails of near blacks and near whites) might fit another image.

In my understanding, tonality refers instead to the choice of exactly which particular grey level in the available range should the photographer pick to represent any chosen colour "items" in the scene.

Eg let's think for simplicity at a discretised grayscale palette. Let's say we have a scanner able to digitise at 14bits/pixel. This gives us 16,384 values to chose from as the destination gray, with 0 being absolute black and 16.383 being absolute white.

We take a picture containing a red apple and a banana. Our task is to map the red and the yellow to pleasant gray values in the [0, 16,383] range. How do we pick? We have a few variables at hand

1. lighting of the scene
2. any filters?
3. film
4. developer
5. exposure time
6. exposure methods
7. processing time
8. processing temperature
9. choice of scanner/enlarger head
10. choice of paper
11. ...

With these tools at hand we can then take a decision on how to map that red and that yellow to some grey between 0 and 16,383. Do we want

1. the red to be very dark, much closer to the black background than to the yellow? [eg apple= 200, banana= 6000]
2. the red to be a very similar shade of gray as the yellow, both far from the black background? [eg apple= 4560, banana= 6000]
3. the yellow to be very fair, close to white, as far as possible from the black? [ eg banana= 12000]
4. both objects to be very fair as far as possible from the black background? [eg apple = 10235, banana = 12000]
5. something else?

I believe the outcome of the decision leading to the mapping of those colours to certain grey shades will be relevant to the viewer, who will then express a judgement on a 'good/poor tonality'. I believe we carry expectations on what shade of grey should most objects be represented with to be vaguely 'correct'. I think the brain strives to look for correctness even when evaluating a BW image.

So perhaps 'poor tonality' in the example above would be an image in which the banana grey is very close to the apple grey, as our brain struggles to fit that against a colour representation of the scene (we know that a red apple is extremely different from a yellow banana in the real world).

A few examples from flickr

example 1

example 2

example 3

example 4

example 5


There are two images here that I would consider prime examples of 'poor tonality'. The remaining three I would pick them as examples of good tonality. Would be interesting to do this properly and perform some kind of blind rating to see if we reach some sort of consensus.

I see what you mean. Examples 1, 3, and 4 have good tonality, but 2 and 5 do not.

Still, I am not certain how significant the translation from color is in all this. I'll have to think about that for a while. My instinct is telling me it is more about the actual shades of gray, without regard to what color those shades represent(?) But you may be on to something. I certainly do agree that using various tones (shades of gray) to make certain elements stand out from the background is very important to the success of a photo.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I see what you mean. Examples 1, 3, and 4 have good tonality, but 2 and 5 do not.

Still, I am not certain how significant the translation from color is in all this. I'll have to think about that for a while. My instinct is telling me it is more about the actual shades of gray, without regard to what color those shades represent(?) But you may be on to something. I certainly do agree that using various tones (shades of gray) to make certain elements stand out from the background is very important to the success of a photo.

Maybe we can come up with a "rule" for good tonality. Rules are just descriptions of what our brains already find pleasing. YOu and I already agree on this set of pictures. So our brains think similarly, at least a little in this area. We have similar aesthetic appreciations.

So what is it about tonality that we can identify before we shoot the picture that will turn out pleasing looking at the photo?

 

[Nicholas Lindan]

I'll throw out a definition:

Tonality is a photograph minus its subject matter.

 

[koraks]

I'll throw out a definition:

Tonality is a photograph minus its subject matter.

I think you'll need to strip off a bit more than that. Besides, you'd still have to define both of the other concepts if you choose this approach. Especially the latter may prove more fickle than it seems at first sight.

 

[Helge]

This is what I expect from a film and developer, Kodak Tri-X 400 @ ISO 400 developed in replenished XTOL, in great tonality. Notice the smoothness of the tones in each individual sheet of metal. Hasselblad 903 SWC. And do not say that I never post anything again. View attachment 323435 View attachment 323436 View attachment 323437 View attachment 323438 View attachment 323439

This is what I expect from a film and developer, Kodak Tri-X 400 @ ISO 400 developed in replenished XTOL, in great tonality. Notice the smoothness of the tones in each individual sheet of metal. Hasselblad 903 SWC. And do not say that I never post anything again. View attachment 323435 View attachment 323436 View attachment 323437 View attachment 323438 View attachment 323439

You’re good! Those are not random snaps in case anyone was wondering.
I wouldn’t have thought you were a Frank Gehry fan though.