Russia in color, a century ago

In the meantime, I'll take one more stab at horribly distorting your position in a trollish and intellectually dishonest fashion. What you seem to be saying is as follows:

With the advent of digital image manipulation tools such as Photoshop, we've discovered the visual equivalent of glutimates, the previously unrecognized fifth "taste", which does not have its own distinct flavor, and yet somehow manages to make everything that is combined with it taste ever so much better. Editorial photographers now use Photoshop to dump glutimates into the images that we routinely see by the bucketful, and these visual glutimates were also liberally sprinkled into the restored Proudin-Gorsky images. Anyone who experiences any particular feeling of "wow" from seeing these restored images, is really just enjoying those glutimates. The original data, sans artificial glutimate enhancement, would never wow the modern eye.

I have no doubt that you are correct about the visual glutimates that are routinely added to our modern visual diet. But I should also think that this is actually nothing new. This has been routinely done long before the invention of Photoshop, just as it was routinely done in cooking before the scientific confirmation a decade or so ago of a fifth kind of taste bud. E.g., Modern French cuisine, as codified in the late 19th century, is largely based on getting plenty of glutimates into food through the use of veal stock and deglazing, etc. There's a similar story for Japanese food, which led to the patenting of monosodium glutimate in 1908.

For a famous editorial photo ladened with darkroom MSG, rather than Photoshop created MSG, we need look no further than the famous photo of RFK after he was shot:

http://www.the1968exhibit.org/sites/the1968exhibit.org/files...

Should I somehow feel cheated that too much MSG has gotten into the meat of what was supposed to be reality? Maybe I should. But I don't. And surely what moves me about this photo is not merely the darkroom. You have stated previously that people who are in awe of the Proudin-Gorsky restorations are really in awe of nothing more than Photoshop. In that case, what moves me in the RFK photo, is nothing more than the darkroom. That, of course, is absurd.

Also, I'm not convinced that this visual MSG in the Proudin-Gorsky photos has quite the immense effect that you seem to imply that it does.

Compare this Proudin-Gorsky image:

http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bi...

side-by-side with this scanned Kodachrome slide from 1941:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsac/1a33000/1a33900/1a339...

Yes, the Proudin-Gorsky image looks more modern. But the Kodachrome image from 1941 is as equally impressive in its own way--those girls look like they could step right out of that slide and into my living room. And this is presumably without the addition of any MSG. Or at least not any that is not inherent in the Kodachrome process.

Also, Like Nietzche, I don't always write to be understood, at least noy just by just anyone. You may need to do some work or have some training. But to those that know, it will make sense.

As a sidebar example: accurate/innacurate.

Think about this at the pixel level. It already is innacurate (its a square). Or with Jpeg compression, its also deleting information and replacing it (less accurate--like areas of information are simplified). And then, at another leve of abstraction consider something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsharp_masking. You should read this, but the tl;dr is I can make an image "sharp" by ~blurring it. So, is that "more accurate" (can see it clear) or less accrurate (its more blurry?). I've just lost data. But I gained contrast. Wait, what?

So, there is a problem in continuing the discussion at this level without alot more work. Its a practical problem as well. One just need different mental frameworks to progress. Its just that simple. At the end, only then, can you come back and have a better understanding of "accurate" etc. But don't take my word for it -- that book is really good--and touches on all of this. And it is Rigorous. He's an Oxford man. Etc.

Of course, there is a reason it is a book and not a Hacker News Thread. =D