What is meant by tonality?

[MattKing]

I don't think "Acutance" plays much part in perceptions of tonality, we need to be careful as acutance adds a very different issue that of perceived sharpness. Higher acutance may not go hand in hand with better tonality.

Ian

Ian:

Actually, I think that this was part of what I was trying to say .

Perceived sharpness tends to distract us. When the accutance is lower, our attention is drawn to issues of tonality.

 

[keithwms]

Those who seek simple definitions for difficult concepts will ultimately fail to understand the underlying concepts.

Of course acutance plays a big role: you can form a beautiful, continuous tone image with only two constituent tones. What's the tonal range? 1 bit! Which is crap tonality if you think tonality is merely the range of constituent tones. You can make beautiful music with a discrete, twelve tone scale (and many other noncontinuous scales too).

Anyway, let us not forget that it is always easier to express photographic concepts with images. We're photographers; that's what we do. We'd be writers otherwise We shouldn't feel compelled to put complicated photographic concepts into a few words and simple definitions. I salute those who try, but... at the end of the day, these are not easy concepts.

 

[Curt]

A partial or temporary conclusion, subject to reconsideration, that I've drawn from the use of tonality is that I've used it in the past to describe a condition that exists in a print that is aesthetically pleasing. Now, to me, it's like the experiment which goes like this: Look around the space your are in right now, look only for the color Red. Search out for only that color, it could be any color but look for Red. The word tonality is like this, it was there but until I took a concentrated look for it there it was in the vocabulary riding along with the other descriptors that are used commonly, accurately or not. One problem I see is the lack of ways to say we like or don't like a work. I once had a teacher in grade school who took points away when we used the work "good". That's good, that's very good. What's good enough? Good shot! Then there is great, great job, great print, great photo, great image, When it's not good it's great. I've used fantastic or excellent too and what does that mean in the scheme of things?

I read a lot about technique and visualization but describing a work of art appears to be lacking. Some people use that familiarity stump to say they like it when descriptors don't come to mind, "I remember that wall in the alley, I thought it would make a good photo too", kind of statement. Or I was there when it was taken and the light was great. And there is less said when the work is by someone famous. I just love that photo, it's an Ansel Adams. No need to critically analyze or discuss the prints tonality there.

Curt

 

[Q.G.]

Those who seek simple definitions for difficult concepts will ultimately fail to understand the underlying concepts.

Of course acutance plays a big role: you can form a beautiful, continuous tone image with only two constituent tones. What's the tonal range? 1 bit! Which is crap tonality if you think tonality is merely the range of constituent tones. You can make beautiful music with a discrete, twelve tone scale (and many other noncontinuous scales too).

Acutance has nothing to do with it.

You may not like an image with a range of just "1 bit" (?). But that simply means that you don't like the tonality of an image that has just too two, very close tones in it.

Acute changes in tone do not play a role at all in determining whether something has, or is, tonality or not.
Acutance, abrupt changes in tone, exagerated changes in tone even, may play a big role in sharpness and resolution. But that's another matter.

 

[keithwms]

Q.G. I took time out of my day to remove you, momentarily, from my ignore list just to let you know that you completely missed my point.

And the point was...

Even an image with the worst possible tonality (per some definitions) with only black and white constituent tones, can produce a full continuous, tone scale (=good tonality??!) in the image, if you have a high enough density of specks/dots/pixels/whatever.

Is that important to understand? Well... do you think that the constituent specks of a latent image really form a continuous tone image, at the microscale? What about at the scale of the developed and printed image? Think about it.

And in a similar vein: acutance (which is ultimately edge contrast, per most definitions) definitely contributes to how we perceive tonal boundaries and therefore how we perceive continuity of tone. Posterization is far more likely to occur at sharp tone gradients. Anybody seen any weird halos in online images before, even though our monitors are capable of rendering a very large number of tones? Think about it.

Bottom line: how many tones you count up is very important to tonality... but it's not the whole story. How the tones are distributed, spatially, is very, very important to how we perceive continuity of tone.

 

[markbarendt]

But where in your example were you talking about tonality?

Not my example to give, it's Ian's assertion. :confused:

 

[markbarendt]

Ian:

Actually, I think that this was part of what I was trying to say .

Perceived sharpness tends to distract us. When the accutance is lower, our attention is drawn to issues of tonality.

What's the difference?

Aren't these just choices about what we want to emphasize?

 

[markbarendt]

Those who seek simple definitions for difficult concepts will ultimately fail to understand the underlying concepts.

Of course acutance plays a big role: you can form a beautiful, continuous tone image with only two constituent tones. What's the tonal range? 1 bit! Which is crap tonality if you think tonality is merely the range of constituent tones. You can make beautiful music with a discrete, twelve tone scale (and many other noncontinuous scales too).

Anyway, let us not forget that it is always easier to express photographic concepts with images. We're photographers; that's what we do. We'd be writers otherwise We shouldn't feel compelled to put complicated photographic concepts into a few words and simple definitions. I salute those who try, but... at the end of the day, these are not easy concepts.

I'm not asking for easy, just not vague.

 

[markbarendt]

Bottom line: how many tones you count up is very important to tonality... but it's not the whole story. How the tones are distributed, spatially, is very, very important to how we perceive continuity of tone.

I like that, thinking of a photo as a map of sorts.

 

[keithwms]

I'm not asking for easy, just not vague.

Yep, fair enough. I definitely like the goal of being less vague, and it's definitely true that people tend to use words like tonality because it's so hard to put into words why a print is or isn't effective.

 

[lxdude]

I like a print with lots of tonality and boke.

 

[Q.G.]

Q.G. I took time out of my day to remove you, momentarily, from my ignore list just to let you know that you completely missed my point.

And the point was...

Even an image with the worst possible tonality (per some definitions) with only black and white constituent tones, can produce a full continuous, tone scale (=good tonality??!) in the image, if you have a high enough density of specks/dots/pixels/whatever.

Is that important to understand? Well... do you think that the constituent specks of a latent image really form a continuous tone image, at the microscale? What about at the scale of the developed and printed image? Think about it.

And in a similar vein: acutance (which is ultimately edge contrast, per most definitions) definitely contributes to how we perceive tonal boundaries and therefore how we perceive continuity of tone. Posterization is far more likely to occur at sharp tone gradients. Anybody seen any weird halos in online images before, even though our monitors are capable of rendering a very large number of tones? Think about it.

Bottom line: how many tones you count up is very important to tonality... but it's not the whole story. How the tones are distributed, spatially, is very, very important to how we perceive continuity of tone.

There's tonality, Keith, and how we perceive and like the way it happens to be.
Two separate things.

Everything in an image is a change (or even complete lack thereof) in tone. Does that make everything tonality?

What happens at the subliminal stage (i.e. your observation that despite having a complete tonal range from deepst black to the purest whte there really only are two tones: black and white) is hardly part of anything we see in an image, thus also not part of what we talk about.

Acutance is about sharpness and resolution. As such about the occurance of tone on a small (if not small - it's not acute) spatial scale. Opposed to the grain thingy something we do see. But still not part of what tonality is.

 

[keithwms]

I like a print with lots of tonality and boke.

Oh crap, the 'b' word... Somewhere there is a 50 page thread defining that...

 

[keithwms]

(your observation that despite having a complete tonal range from deepst black to the purest whte there really only are two tones: black and white) is hardly part of anything we see in an image, thus also not part of what we talk about.

So nice of you to let us know what we do and what we don't talk about. I guess we also won't talk about the role of grain and format size and enlargement factor and staining developers and all that.

 

[markbarendt]

Everything in an image is a change (or even complete lack thereof) in tone. Does that make everything tonality?

Sure, why not?

Acutance is about sharpness and resolution. As such about the occurance of tone on a small (if not small - it's not acute) spatial scale. Opposed to the grain thingy something we do see. But still not part of what tonality is.

Tonality used in a technical (not artistic) sense could define accutance.

The two tone example Kieth provides is reasonable example in this theoretical conversation, it is simply very high in accutance but probably low on resolution.

At the other end of the scale, many of the pt/pd contact prints I've seen from LF negs have great accutance and cover a huge and full range of tones with full rich blacks and clean whites. Most of these prints were obviously well shot and meticulously printed with lots of detail and accutance.

Still and yet, artistically as a group to me, most pt/pd prints seem a bit too "gray" or "muddy" in a tonal sense unless I'm very close. Other people looking at the same prints say they have incredible tonality and can't stop gushing about them.

For me it is almost as if many of these photos have overreached and tried to get too much of the scene.

Those examples, like your comment about Kieth's two tone example, are simply artistic judgments.

Technically we can define these differences on a tonal scale, a print density curve.

My understanding of why burning and dodging is important has changed since I started. Burning and dodging give me the ability to use a steeper paper contrast curve (one that won't normally let the films curve fit on the papers curve). This help's me get rid of the gray feeling.

Burning and dodging allow me to locally control where certain areas in the print fall on the papers density curve, my choices about where to place each detail on the curve can control the accutance.

 

[Q.G.]

So nice of you to let us know what we do and what we don't talk about. I guess we also won't talk about the role of grain and format size and enlargement factor and staining developers and all that.

You think we do?

Acutance is not tonality.

 

[keithwms]

Acutance is not tonality.

Who said it is? I must have missed that...

 

[Q.G.]

Tonality used in a technical (not artistic) sense could define accutance.

Yes. But that doesn't work the other way round.

The two tone example Kieth provides is reasonable example in this theoretical conversation, it is simply very high in accutance but probably low on resolution.

Keith's two tones are black and white. He was saying that with a suitable distribution of tiny specks of black on a white background, we can create all intermediate tones.

High acutance is an as sudden as possible transition from one tone to another.

Some people prefer it to be exagerated (the darker tone getting darker near the transition, the lighter tone lighter) to be called acutance.
But that sort of acutance is detrimental to resolution, because it requires space for the tones to get darker and lighter before the actual transition of one to the other.

Though both types of acutance involves a change of tone, it's not tonality. That, because it happens on too small a scale.
But it's not an either or thing: so though i still think it's not tonality, i would be happy to place int on the extreme end of what is tonality.

At the other end of the scale, many of the pt/pd contact prints I've seen from LF negs have great accutance and cover a huge and full range of tones with full rich blacks and clean whites. Most of these prints were obviously well shot and meticulously printed with lots of detail and accutance.

Still and yet, artistically as a group to me, most pt/pd prints seem a bit too "gray" or "muddy" in a tonal sense unless I'm very close. Other people looking at the same prints say they have incredible tonality and can't stop gushing about them.

For me it is almost as if many of these photos have overreached and tried to get too much of the scene.

Those examples, like your comment about Kieth's two tone example, are simply artistic judgments.

No. They are both examples of how tonality is more than just edge sharpmess, and descriptions of what an image is like.

The artistic judgement bit only begins where you are attaching words like "good" or "bad" to it, and begin to aim for such things to achieve a(n artistic) goal.

Technically we can define these differences on a tonal scale, a print density curve.

My understanding of why burning and dodging is important has changed since I started. Burning and dodging give me the ability to use a steeper paper contrast curve (one that won't normally let the films curve fit on the papers curve). This help's me get rid of the gray feeling.

Burning and dodging allow me to locally control where certain areas in the print fall on the papers density curve, my choices about where to place each detail on the curve can control the accutance.

Agree.
That's working with tonality. Goes way beyond that acutance thingy.

 

[mooseontheloose]

Mark...not be facetious, but to quote an earlier post, I know it when I see it. That being said, I'm very far from being an expert.

I almost always print on VC paper but a few years ago when I was living in France I was able to use some of the old graded paper that was left behind in the community darkroom I was using. I made the best exposures I could on what was new Ilford Multigrade Pearl RC paper, and some old Ilford fiber grade 2 paper. The old paper blew the new paper away in terms of tonality -- the gradations between tones were more obviously subtle, if that makes sense. I wish I had those images here with me in Japan so I could scan and post them, but unfortunately I don't. In any event, it was the first time for me to understand what tonality really meant in an image.

 

[markbarendt]

The old paper blew the new paper away in terms of tonality --

It does make sense but only because you also define a measurable/visible difference in the tonality.

The word "tonality" can't seem to stand on it's own, it gets us in-the-ballpark but needs a modifier/definition to "get us to the right seats".

the gradations between tones were more obviously subtle, if that makes sense.

The subtlety you describe, suggests to me that maybe there is a difference in the response of the two paper curves or maybe it's that the unfiltered light used with the graded paper carries different "information" to the paper, IDK.

Either way it is definable in terms of materials and process. Because of that I see no reason for ambiguity.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

I'm glad Mark started this thread, but I still think this discussion would be much easier if terms such as tonality, gradation and acutance are kept (as they should) as separate entities. Only mixing them causes the confusion, and I see no benefit in mixing them, because they are different!

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Those who seek simple definitions for difficult concepts will ultimately fail to understand the underlying concepts. ...

Complex concepts are nothing but the interaction of simple ideas. Understanding the underlying ideas allows for the creation of simple definitions. Accepting complexity as a given will keep us in clueless awe.

... Of course acutance plays a big role: you can form a beautiful, continuous tone image with only two constituent tones. What's the tonal range? 1 bit! Which is crap tonality if you think tonality is merely the range of constituent tones. You can make beautiful music with a discrete, twelve tone scale (and many other noncontinuous scales too). ...

Keith

I do not understand how one can create continuous tone with only two tones. Of course, there is halftoning, as used in magazines and books, but that's only a simulation and only works because of the resolution limits of our eyes.

Then again, when you break it down to the silver particles forming our images, you only get black and white 'pixels' as well. But that maybe taking it too far.

 

[markbarendt]

I'm glad Mark started this thread, but I still think this discussion would be much easier if terms such as tonality, gradation and acutance are kept (as they should) as separate entities. Only mixing them causes the confusion, and I see no benefit in mixing them, because they are different!

So...

If we are talking about a print:

The entire possible tonal range is from paper white to maximum black.

Is this what you are calling the tonality? Is there more to it than that?

For me this range of tones could easily be called global contrast instead.

The gradation would seem to be a measure of the smoothness of the transitions between paper white and maximum black.

Is that right? Is there more to it than that?

 

[Ian David]

Whatever definition of tonality falls out of the end of this thread, it is not going to be adopted by the world. In the end, I reckon the best way to preserve your sanity is to use a reasonable definition which appeals to you: there are a couple of good options in this thread. Then when other people use the word in reference to a particular photograph, you can ask them what they mean by it in relation to that photograph. If they can explain what they mean, you will then understand their view of the image and what they mean by tonality. If they cannot explain what they mean, then their use of the word is meaningless and you can ignore it. If you cannot ask them for some reason, that is too bad, but chances are they are not using precisely the same definition as you.

Ian

 

[markbarendt]

Whatever definition of tonality falls out of the end of this thread, it is not going to be adopted by the world. In the end, I reckon the best way to preserve your sanity is to use a reasonable definition which appeals to you: there are a couple of good options in this thread.

Yes, this thread has provided several options. I have learned some valuable things here, hope others have too.

Then when other people use the word in reference to a particular photograph, you can ask them what they mean by it in relation to that photograph. If they can explain what they mean, you will then understand their view of the image and what they mean by tonality. If they cannot explain what they mean, then their use of the word is meaningless and you can ignore it. If you cannot ask them for some reason, that is too bad, but chances are they are not using precisely the same definition as you.

Ian

In a sense that's what I've done here.