Ralf
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Ever wondered why some of your prints lack quite some tonal range after scanning them and putting them on the web for presentation?
Apart from the low resolution and general limitations of a computer monitor to display a wide range of tonal values, there seems to be a big flaw in all major photo editing software:
http://www.4p8.com/eric.brasseur/gamma.html
Summary: All major photo editing programs seem to have a bug in their image resize code which ruins the gamma of the resized image. In other words, the very moment you resize the scan to web size, a lot of information in the original scan is being lost, simply to a faulty resize code and not only because you decrease the size of the image.
This flaw in programming results in a loss of tonal range, especially in the shadows.
Even the expensive Photoshop software fails at this, I just tried it for myself and it opened my eyes to a problem I remember very well in the past. I always felt like adjusting the gamma curve in Photoshop after resizing images (I have a calibrated system). The above link seems to answer that.
Check out the above link, further down the page there are also some examples given where you can see the difference. It's very obvious.
Thought this might be helpful, especially regarding your online portfolios.
Apart from the low resolution and general limitations of a computer monitor to display a wide range of tonal values, there seems to be a big flaw in all major photo editing software:
http://www.4p8.com/eric.brasseur/gamma.html
Summary: All major photo editing programs seem to have a bug in their image resize code which ruins the gamma of the resized image. In other words, the very moment you resize the scan to web size, a lot of information in the original scan is being lost, simply to a faulty resize code and not only because you decrease the size of the image.
This flaw in programming results in a loss of tonal range, especially in the shadows.
Even the expensive Photoshop software fails at this, I just tried it for myself and it opened my eyes to a problem I remember very well in the past. I always felt like adjusting the gamma curve in Photoshop after resizing images (I have a calibrated system). The above link seems to answer that.
Check out the above link, further down the page there are also some examples given where you can see the difference. It's very obvious.
Thought this might be helpful, especially regarding your online portfolios.
