Gamma correction is the process of adjusting the brightness of an image so colors appear correctly on-screen. It seems everything is uniformly bright, but in reality, the light from each pixel on your screen has a different intensity — just like natural light. Let’s explain how gamma correction comes into play.
What Is Gamma Correction?
Gamma correction is a technique used to display colors on your screen accurately. It adjusts for a device’s non-linear display characteristics, ensuring the encoded and decoded luminance in digital images and videos is accurate. It’s performed by the camera and monitor, which have an internal function that adjusts brightness to create more realistic images. The gamma of each device – or how it handles this adjustment – is different, so you may notice some slight differences between what you see on your camera and what comes out in photos or videos.
Why Does Gamma Correction Matter?
Gamma correction ensures that what you see on your screen is what the camera sees. This involves mapping input values through a correction function tailored to the display device’s characteristics. It’s also essential to make sure that colors are displayed accurately. If you have a bright red shirt in real life and want to show it off, gamma correction will help ensure that the color doesn’t look washed out or dull when it’s bright and vibrant in person.
Gamma correction can be used to control the overall brightness of an image, making it an invaluable tool for fixing images that are too dark or bleached out. A standard gamma value, often considered to be 2.2, is essential for proper digital display calibration.
Enhance Your Images with Cloudinary
Factoring in gamma correction into the images on your site can be a huge pain. But instead of breaking out complex photo editing software and spending hours correcting it, why not make your life easier?
With Cloudinary’s media optimization, we automatically compress images using the optimal encoder for the task. You won’t need to worry about sacrificing image quality for performance – Cloudinary takes care of it with our Media Experience Cloud.
For those looking to calibrate their monitor’s gamma settings, especially in Windows 10, the process involves a few simple steps: clicking the magnifying glass icon, searching for “Calibrate display color,” and using the provided slider to adjust the gamma and brightness during the calibration process. If you want to start optimizing your media, try Cloudinary. You can sign up for free today!
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