Digital imaging is replacing conventional photography in many applications. As the quality of digital images improves, more applications for this technology will be found. This talk will examine the importance of gamma correction in digital imaging.

Although many researchers believe that digital imaging will soon replace photography, it is probably more correct to think of digital imaging as an enhancement to photography. The most critical problem with translating our knowledge of photography to digital imaging is that photography operates exclusively via logarithmic functions. The exposure versus density curves common to photography have an x axis that is logarithmic. The development curves for film and paper are also logarithmic. The slope of the log-linear portion of this curve is designated gamma. All operations normally performed in the darkroom whether processing film or prints manipulate the gamma functions to achieve the best recorded image. The first rule that should be obvious is that every image has a different optimal gamma and every different image medium (whether graded photographic paper or the density of print on a digital image printer) will change that optimal gamma.