The article keeps using the acronym "ADC" without defining it.
Likely analog to digital converter, digitizing the raw signal from the photodetector cells
What an unprocessed photo looks like
131–140 of 418 posts
Re: What an unprocessed photo looks like
#132But does applying the same transfer function to each pixel (of a given colour anyway) count as "processing"? What bothers me as an old-school photographer is this. When you really pushed it with film (e.g. overprocess 400ISO B&W film to 1600 ISO and even then maybe underexpose at the enlargement step) you got nasty grain. But that was uniform "noise" all over the picture. Nowadays, noise reduction is impressive, but…
> does applying the same transfer function to each pixel (of a given colour anyway) count as “processing”?
This is interesting to think about, at least for us photo nerds. ;) I honestly think there are multiple right answers, but I have a specific one that I prefer. Applying the same transfer function to all pixels corresponds pretty tightly to film & paper exposure in analog photography. So one reasonable followup question is: did we count manually over- or under-exposing an analog photo to be manipulation or “processing”? Like you can’t see an image without exposing it, so even though there are timing & brightness recommendations for any given film or paper, generally speaking it’s not considered manipulation to expose it until it’s visible. Sometimes if we pushed or pulled to change the way something looks such that you see things that weren’t visible to the naked eye, then we call it manipulation, but generally people aren’t accused of “photoshopping” something just by raising or lowering the brightness a little, right?
When I started reading the article, my first thought was, ‘there’s no such thing as an unprocessed photo that you can see’. Sensor readings can’t be looked at without making choices about how to expose them, without choosing a mapping or transfer function. That’s not to mention that they come with physical response curves that the author went out of his way to sort-of remove. The first few dark images in there are a sort of unnatural way to view images, but in fact they are just as processed as the final image, they’re simply processed differently. You can’t avoid “processing” a digital image if you want to see it, right? Measuring light with sensors involves response curves, transcoding to an image format involves response curves, and displaying on monitor or paper involves response curves, so any image has been processed a bunch by the time we see it, right? Does that count as “processing”? Technically, I think exposure processing is always built-in, but that kinda means exposing an image is natural and not some type of manipulation that changes the image. Ultimately it depends on what we mean by “processing”.
Re: What an unprocessed photo looks like
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just wait a few years, all of this is still getting better.
"Better"...
"AIer"... Who even needs a lens or CCD any more?
Artist develops a camera that takes AI-generated images based on your location. Paragraphica generates pictures based on the weather, date, and other information.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/tech/ai-camera-images-paragr...
Re: What an unprocessed photo looks like
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's not a crime but applying post processing in an overly generous way that goes a lot further than replicating what a human sees does take away from what makes pictures interesting imho vs other mediums, that it's a genuine representation of something that actually happened. if you take that away, a picture is not very interesting, it's hyperrealistic so not super creative a lot of the time (compared to eg painting…
Do you also want the IR light to be in there? That would make it more of 'genuine representation'.
Wouldn't be a genuine version of what my eyes would've seen, had I been the one looking instead of the camera.
I can't see infrared.
Re: What an unprocessed photo looks like
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
hey, not accusing you of anything (bad assumptions don't lead to a conducive conversation) but did you use AI to write or assist with this comment? this is totally out of my own self-interest, no problems with its content
Upon inspection, the author's personal website used em dashes in 2023. I hope this helped with your witch hunt. I'm imagining a sort of Logan's Run-like scifi setup where only people with a documented em dash before November 30, 2022, i.e. D(ash)-day, are left with permission to write.
> I'm imagining a sort of Logan's Run-like scifi setup where only people with a documented em dash before November 30, 2022, i.e. D(ash)-day, are left with permission to write.
At least Robespierre needed two sentences before condemning a man. Now the mob is lynching people on the basis of a single glyph.
Re: What an unprocessed photo looks like
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure — but people reasonably distinguish between photos and digital art, with “photo” used to denote the intent to accurately convey rather than artistic expression. We’ve had similar debates about art using miniatures and lens distortions versus photos since photography was invented — and digital editing fell on the lens trick and miniature side of the issue.
Journalistic/event photography is about accuracy to reality, almost all other types of photography are not. Portrait photography -- no, people don't look like that in real life with skin flaws edited out Landscape photography -- no, the landscapes don't look like that 99% of the time, the photographer picks the 1% of the time when it looks surreal Staged photography -- no, it didn't really happen Street photography -…
Re landscape photography: If it actually looked like that in person 1 percent of the time, I'd argue it's still accurate to reality.
Re: What an unprocessed photo looks like
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing I've learned while dabbling in photography is that there are no "fake" images, because there are no "real" images. Everything is an interpretation of the data that the camera has to do, making a thousand choices along the way, as this post beautifully demonstrates. A better discriminator might be global edits vs local edits, with local edits being things like retouching specific parts of the image to make d…
> "Fake" images are images with intent to deceive The ones that make the annual rounds up here in New England are those foliage photos with saturation jacked. “Look at how amazing it was!” They’re easy to spot since doing that usually wildly blows out the blues in the photo unless you know enough to selectively pull those back.
Often I find photos rather dull compared to what I recall. Unless the lighting is perfect it’s easy to end up with a poor image. On the other hand the images used in travel websites are laughably over processed.
Re: What an unprocessed photo looks like
#138Author should've mentioned how the first image "as my camera’s sensor sees it" was obtained.
Re: What an unprocessed photo looks like
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting that the "NTSC" look you describe is essentially rounded versions of the coefficients quoted in the comment mentioning ppm2pgm. I don't know the lineage of the values you used of course, but I found it interesting nonetheless. I imagine we'll never know, but it would be cool to be able to trace the path that lead to their formula, as well as the path to you arriving at yours
The NTSC color coefficients are the grandfather of all luminance coefficients. It is necessary that it was precisely defined because of the requirements of backwards-compatible color transmission (YIQ is the common abbreviation for the NTSC color space, I being ~reddish and Q being ~blueish), basically they treated B&W (technically monochrome) pictures like how B&W film and videotubes treated them: great in green, av…
To the "the grandfather of all luminance coefficients" ... https://www.earlytelevision.org/pdf/ntsc_signal_specificatio... from 1953.
Page 5 has:
Eq' = 0.41 (Eb' - Ey') + 0.48 (Er' - Ey')
Ei' = -0.27(Eb' - Ey') + 0.74 (Er' - Ey')
Ey' = 0.30Er' + 0.59Eg' + 0.11Eb'
Re: What an unprocessed photo looks like
#140But does applying the same transfer function to each pixel (of a given colour anyway) count as "processing"? What bothers me as an old-school photographer is this. When you really pushed it with film (e.g. overprocess 400ISO B&W film to 1600 ISO and even then maybe underexpose at the enlargement step) you got nasty grain. But that was uniform "noise" all over the picture. Nowadays, noise reduction is impressive, but…
Just wait a few years, all of this is still getting better.
It's not really - it's going in the inverse direction regarding how much more processed and artificially altered it gets.