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Fractals/quality
Reference material by Wikibooks contributors. This retains its source identity and is not 411 news reporting.
Images with high image quality are instantly pleasing to the eye.Shuttermuse glossary: image-quality = What does image quality mean when talking about photography?
If you are interested in high-quality rendering, you might wonder if the images displayed on your CRT, LCD, film, or paper will result in light patterns that are similar enough to the "real world" situation so that your eye will perceive them as realistic. You may be surprised to learn that there are several steps in the digital image creation pipeline where things can go awry. developer.nvidia gpugems3: importance-being-linear
What does image quality mean when talking about 2D static images (computer graphic, non-photographic digital images), especially fractal images?
Factors that affect quality include all elements of the chain:Shuttermuse glossary: image-quality
Target, destination, purpose
Resolution/size of the image = Fineness of image detailsEizo: Ins and outs of HDR
Scanning, sampling and plane decomposition
Display Aspect ratio
Colour
Bit depth of the colour( 1, 8, 24 bit colour) = Fineness of colour gradations
Type of numbers: integer or real
Colour gamut = Vividness of colours
Colour space
Computer graphics lighting:
A wider range of brightness from darkest to lightest = High-dynamic-range lighting rendering (HDR), better contrast (Intensity of image lighting)
Brightness and evenness of illumination
Transfer function
Gamma correction
Geometry
Scene composition (For 3D images or 2D-pseudo 3D images)
Workflow or image processing or pipelinę of 2D graphic
Hardware
Software
Image file type - See file type section
Compression (Lossy, lossless). Lossless data compression does not degrade the data. Lossy compression creates coarser images as more details are removed (Poor quality)
General file type: Raster or vector
Tips
How to make better images
How to make better imagesFractalForums.org: Tips for making high quality images
How to create realistic 2D static images (Mostly by Andy Ritger)Linux and High Dynamic Range (HDR) Display (By Andy Ritger, 2016)
Higher than standard (SD) pixel resolution (HD, UHD, "4K" and "8K")
Higher than standard bit depth per colour channel (Now standard is 8 bit depth): So 10 bit is a new target (See also number type and precision)
Wider Colour gamut (WCG): Express a wider range of colours than today (BT.2020 colour gamut)
High Dynamic Range (HDR): express a wider range of luminance than today (see AVIF file type)
Tips (By Paul Bourke)
Do fractal creation in 16 bit, not 8 bit, integer or floating numbers for each pixel calculation
Apply anti-aliasing by Supersampling each final pixel (Render a 30,000 pixel version of the image)
Do all Colour external to fractal creation using gradient maps, allows you to make appearance decisions independent to the creation
Tips (By 3DickUlus)
"Using 100 samples per pixel, so rendered the full image 100 times with small random jitter (Movement at sub pixel size) and accumulate the result, gives really nice anti-aliasing". 3DickUlus
Tips (By quaz0r)
Use normalised floating-point values: Values between 0 and 1
Use an image I/O library that can take these values as input and output to any format
Average samples together internally in your program, instead of using an external program
Poisson-disk sampling (Blue noise) is the best sampling pattern
Check all elements in the chain from the application to the monitor if they are ready:
Hardware = Graphic workstation: scanner, graphic card, monitor, memory, disk, printer, projector: Settings and calibration
Software: Source and destination = Graphic file type, OS, image editing program, drivers of graphic card
Workflow or image processing or pipeline of 2D graphic
What makes image poor quality?
Colour banding: Discrete jumps from one colour or tone to the next, instead of a smooth gradient. Note that some fractal colouring algorithms (Representation functions) may create colour banding intentionally, like Level Set Method (LSM). Check also False banding
Pixelated image: Pixelisation or mosaic processing is any technique used in editing images or video, whereby an image is blurred by displaying part or all of it at a markedly lower resolution
Posterization which shows as an unintended artefacts of colour quantisation
Image noise, artefacts, glitches, aliasing
What makes image good quality?
Looks good and is instantly pleasing to the eye
No signs of poor quality
Looks realistic
Should highlight features of the data, and not highlight features that are only in the gradient itself = Avoid distorting the data (If it's a scientific visualisation not fractal art)
How to check quality of the image?
Visually, if it looks good and is instantly pleasing to the eye
Use a zoom function to check for distortion, blemishes
How to set up best viewing conditions ?
Photographs on the web are best viewed using a calibrated and profiled monitor and a color-managed browser.
Monitor’s Viewing Angle. Generally, all monitors will show an optimum image when you're sitting near the center of the panel.
ninedegreesbelow : viewing-photographs-on-the-web
dolby Color-Grading-Mastering-suite-setup
benq : behind-monitor-lighting
netflix studios : Color-Critical-Display-Calibration-Guidelines
flanders scientific : tech-resources
cinemaquestinc: About the "Ideal Viewing Environment"
web-browser-color-management-test
cameratico : web-browser-color-management-guide By Fábio Pili Updated Jul 15, 2019
cameratico : web-browser-color-management-test
ICC browser test
How to setup proper color management in your web browser by Greg Benz April 27, 2021
benq : web-browsers-color-management
eizo : management/color-management-summary
How to make quality print of a fractal image
Printing tips
How To Get My Monitor To Match My Printer ?colorwiki: How To Get My Monitor To Match My Printer
Resolution and size
Visual rating of the image resolution qualitySlideshare: Digital-graphics-technology (By Becky J. Ritchie)
Good: Pixels are not visible without zoom
Poor: Pixels are visible without zoom (Pixelated)
Resolution: Image resolution (Measured in pixels per inch, PPI howtogeek : what-is-pixel-density-and-how-does-it-affect-image-quality) describes the detail an image holds. The term applies to raster digital images, film images and other types of images. Higher resolution means more image detail. (By Becky J. Ritchie)
See also:
Scanning, sampling and plane decomposition
Measures of resolution:marketing-partners: Image resolution and quality what you need to know
DPI: Dots per inch. Used in printing and scanning and refers to the dots of ink on one line across one inch. It is a measure of spatial printing or scanner dot density. In particular the number of individual dots that can be placed in a line within the span of 1 inch (2.54 cm). Similarly, dots per centimetre (D/cm or DPcm) refers to the number of individual dots that can be placed within a line of 1 centimetre (0.394 in).
PPI: Pixels per inch. Describes display resolution. Used for display (web, monitors and video production). A pixel is a dot on a video screen
LPI: Lines per inch. Used for half-tones and is the measurement of how close together the lines are in the grid
How to compute PPI
ppi-calculator
omnicalculator
kings pixel-density-calculator
Difference between size and resolutionDFStudio: Digital image size and resolution, what do you need to know?
Image size (in pixels = horizontal resolution x vertical resolution) shows how much information is in the image
Image resolution is related to printing or display
Examples:
The final printed or displayed size needed is 300 dpi @ 5”x7”. Means the image should be 1500x2100 or larger
The final printed or displayed size needed is 300 dpi @ 8”x10”. Means the image should be 2400x3000 or larger
The quality of a printed image depends on two things:
The capabilities of the printer (DPI)
The original image resolution (Size)
The quality of a displayed image depends on:
The capabilities of the monitor (PPI)
Zoom factor
The original image resolution (Size)
Resolution types
Spatial (Size of smallest object that is recognisable in mm), maybe also divided into horizontal and vertical
Contrast (Minimal contrast between what is recognisable)
Temporal (Minimal time in ms, for moving, not static, images)
Compression
Data compression
Lossy compression
Lossless compression
Bit depth
RGB cube: 3, 6, 9, 15 and 18 bit:
top|framelesstop|framelesstop|framelesstop|framelesstop|frameless
Greyscale: 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 bit:
top|framelesstop|framelesstop|framelesstop|framelesstop|frameless
What bit depth per colour channel (Precision and number type) should I use?Parker photographic: GIMP bit depth complete guide (2021)
So how many bits do you really need?Petapixel 8, 12, 14 vs 16-Bit Depth: What Do You Really Need? (By Greg Benz, September 19, 2018)
How many bits do you need for sharing on the Internet? 8-bits
How many bits do you need for scanning? When a look at the transparency shows that I'm going to have problems with the shadows then I import 48 bit RAW images, since I want to maximize the advantage
How many bits do you need for printing? 8-bits is fine for the final output, but use 16 if your printer supports it
How does colour space impact bit depth? Colour space (Gamut) is related to bit depth.
How many bits should you use for image processing? Use 32-bits for processing an HDR file
What precision should you choose in GIMP for editing? Choosing 32-bit floating point precision allows you to take full advantage of GEGL's 32-bit floating point processing. 64-bit precision is made available mostly to accommodate importing and exporting very high bit precision images for scientific editingNineDegreesBelow: Users guide to high bit depth GIMP (By Elle Stone)
How many bits can you can see? A 10-bit gradient is OK for display (No visually detected banding)
Why use more bits than what you can see? To avoid numerical errors producing visual errors in the image during image editing (Image processing)
Tips to get 10 bit colour depth working on all elements in the chain from the application to the monitor needed to support it (By Ted Lansing). This includes:Ted Lansing: 10 bit colour depth and Adobe Photoshop CS6
Hardware
Video card
Video connection
Monitor
Software
Application
Operating system
Video card driver
More description
Target destination
Technical destination of the image:
For display (RGB)
Quality display (Full size image without compression or with lossless compression)
Preview (Small image with reduced size, maximum compression even if the quality is reduced)
For printing (CMYK)
For archiving (Full size image without compression or with lossless compression, with all colour space versions): EXR, TIFF
Application of the image
Artistic (Free art): Fancy visualisation, image should be interesting and pleasing to the eye
Design (Applied art)
Scientific (Scientific visualisation)
Colour gradient should highlight features of the data and should not highlight features that are only in the gradient itself
Colour gradient should be perceptually uniform. Uniformity: Perceived differences in colour must accurately reflect numerical data differences
Metric: Enable users to accurately read absolute values in data = Value reading tasks
Form: Gradient should enable users to correctly perceive the shape = Pattern perception
Order: ColourMaps must preserve the order in data
Separation: Different data must be perceived differently
Colour-vision-deficiency (CVD) friendly = Accessible to those with colour blindness
Printer friendly
Photocopy safe
Black
Black (0,0,0,100) is not black; it is a dark gray. The reason it's gray, rather than black, is that the ink is partially absorbed by the paper …" and therefore the grayness of the key-black is relative to the properties of the paper: newspaper sucks a lot while glossy coated paper might not.
"built black" or "rich black." This is usually something like 60/60/40/100, or 40/30/30/100 graphicdesign stackexchange question: what-kind-of-black-should-i-use-when-designing-for-cmyk-print
White
White point
Graphic workstation
Software
Imaging system
Colour Management System
HDR processing ( HDRI)
rendering graphic (HDRR)
HDR tone mapping
HDR encoding
display graphic
What do I need for HDR on PC?What is HDR and how can I get it on PC? Our HDR guide has it all Katharine Castle avatar Feature by Katharine Castle Editor-in-chief Published on July 9, 2018
Monitor with
A high maximum brightness, ideally 1000cd/m2, but at least 600cd/m2+ if not
At least 90% coverage of the DCI-P3 colour gamut
A 10-bit panel
Hardware
Recommendation (By Matt Smith) for what you need to achieve great HDR on a PC
A monitor that's DisplayHDR 1000 certified or a quality HDR television.
A video card from the AMD RX 400, Nvidia GTX 900 series, or Intel integrated graphics found in Intel 7th-gen Core, or newer
An HDMI 2.0a, DisplayPort 1.4, or Thunderbolt 4 connection, or newer
HEVC High Efficiency Video Coding
HDR content, such as an HDR-compatible game or streaming service or HDR image (Photo or digital graphic)
Graphic workstation:
Input devices: Scanner, camera
Processing devices: Graphic card, memory
Storing devices: Hard drive (HD), USB
Output devices: monitor, projector, printer, film recorders
Workstation vs gaming graphics card (By Akshat Verma)
Scanner:
Canon: Colour 48-bit in/24-bit out, greyscale 16-bit in/8-bit out
"I scanned this transparency on my Imacon Photo scanner in 48 bit mode because I wanted to gather as much data to work with as possible. Once I finished adjusting Curves and Colour Balance I then converted to 24 bit for printing and web display". (By Michael Reichmann)Bit depth (By Michael Reichmann, December 2, 2011)
Monitor
3 levels of monitor brightness:
A low brightness if they have a peak brightness below 300 nits
A standard brightness if they have a peak brightness between 300 and 350 nits (SDR)
A high brightness if they have a peak brightness above 350 nits (HDR)
Note that humans can detect brightness levels as low as 0.000001 nits and as high as 100,000,000 nits
How to calibrate your monitor
Wikihow: How to Calibrate Your Monitor (By Jack Lloyd, August 12, 2022
NineDegreesBelow: Monitor profile calibrate confuse (By Elle Stone)
What is the reason for calibration?
If the screen and the printer are calibrated, the green in the leaf, and the photo, and the print will look the same.
Calibration targets:
white point
neutrality of greys
predictability and consistency of tone response
How to test your display (Monitor, projector) for HDR support
Test images (By Greg Benz)
Monitor requirements
BT.2100 colour gamut
Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG) transfer function - For Broadcast TV
Perceptual quantizer (PQ) transfer function - For Internet Streaming and Movies:
VESA_DisplayHDR standards
high resolution and pixel density Eizo: Pixel density 4K
Ports and cables
HDMI Specification HDMI 2.1a supports video resolutions and refresh rates including 8K 60 and 4K 120, and resolutions up to 10K. Dynamic HDR formats are also supported, and bandwidth capability is increased up to 48Gbps
DisplayPortEizo: DisplayPort to D-sub
Mini DisplayPort
USB-CEizo: modern-video-inputs
Serial digital interface ( SDI)
optcore: introduction-to-sdi
Examples:
ASUS ProArt
Mouse: ProArt Mouse MD300 : Up to 4200 dpi sensor resolution and Up to 1000 Hz polling rate
Monitor: ASUS ProArt display PA32UCX-PK 4K HDR IPS Mini LED: World’s 1st HDR 1600 nits & 120 Hz monitor (3000 USD)
32ʺ 4K 120 Hz monitor with true 10-bit colour
1600 nits peak and 1000 nits sustained brightness
Delta E < 1 Colour accuracy / Hardware calibration
Dolby Vision®, HDR10 and HLG support
X-rite i1 Display Pro included
Motherboard: ProArt B660-Creator D4 (200 USD)
Apple 32-inch Pro Display XDR with Retina 6K Display - Standard Glass
32-inch LCD display with Retina 6K resolution (6016 by 3384 pixels)
Pro Stand and VESA Mount Adapter sold separately
Extreme Dynamic Range (XDR)
Brightness: 1000 nits sustained, 1600 nits peak
Contrast ratio: 1,000,000:1
P3 wide color gamut, 10-bit color depth
Software
Colour Management System (CMS):Computer Darkroom: Colour management (By Ion Lyons)Eizo: Colour Management System (CMS)
A device-independent colour space
ICC profiles for each device (i.e. printer, scanner, monitor, digital camera, etc.): Input and output profiles
A Colour Matching Module (CMM)
Colour workflow
Examples:
Linux_color_management
Little CMS - OPEN SOURCE small-footprint CMS, with special focus on accuracy and speed.
Apple’s color management system is called ColorSync
Microsoft’s is called Image Color Management
OS Settings
microsoft: hdr-settings-in-windows
Linux HDR
Web browser
chrome flags: Force color profile
brave://flags/
Libraries
Image I/O library that can take these values as input and output to any format. This can include different bit depths, HDR and different colour spaces
OpenImageIO = Reading, writing and processing images in a wide variety of file formats, using a format-agnostic API
Image processing
ImageJ: Data types: 8-bit greyscale or indexed colour, 16-bit unsigned integer, 32-bit floating-point and RGB colour
Image processing programs:
GIMP
RAW file editorsItsfoss: 6 Best Free and Open-Source Tools for RAW Image Processing in Linux (By Ambarish Kumar, February 4, 2021)BetterTechtips: 7 Best apps to edit RAW photos in Linux (By Aliko Sunawang, September 23, 2018)
RawTherapee
Rawstudio
DigiKam
Darktable
Filmulator
Photivo
LightZone
Shotwell
UFRaw
Number precision and type in GIMP:Docs GIMP 2.10: GIMP-image-precision
Integer precision options
8-bit integer
16-bit integer
32-bit integer
Floating point precision options
16-bit floating point
32-bit floating point
Image file type - High dynamic range file formats - 32‑bpc HDR images
AVIF is a file format developed by Alliance for Open Media. It's an open standard which already enjoys fairly broad support in major web browsers for standard images. AVIF offers numerous advantages over JPG
PNG has 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16-bit greyscale support and 8 and 16-bit-per-sample (That is, 24 and 48-bit) Truecolour support
16-bit integer ProPhotoRGB PNG: Saturated colours
PFM file - floating point image format for HDR images
EXR (OpenEXR): 16-bit OpenEXR files can be considered a good colour precision/file size compromise for the general caseBit depth colour precision in raster images (By Denis Kozlov) OpenEXR has support for color depth using: 16-bit floating-point (half), 32-bit floating-point and 32-bit unsigned integer
TIFF
RGBE image format or Radiance HDR is an image format invented by Gregory Ward Larson for the Radiance rendering system. It stores pixels as one byte each for RGB (Red, green and blue) values with a one byte shared exponent. Thus it stores four bytes per pixel
Final note
Now most of the hardware/software is using 8-bit color channels, some monitors / TV have 10 -bit
Abbreviations
HDR = High Dynamic Range
ICC = The International Color Consortium
IPT
IPT color appearance model
Image Processing Transform
CMS
Color management system, a system for computers to control the representation of colors
CMS = Color Matching System = industry standards in the classification of spot color systems = tools to build, share, and save smart color palettes
PMS = the Pantone Matching System,
CMM = Color Matching Module
CRI = Color Rendering Intentcolor rendering intent by UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON
RIP = Raster Image Processing
OBA = Optical Brightening Agent
CMYK
GCR = Grey component replacement
UCR = Under color removal
Rich black
IPT components:
The I ("intensity") component is a luma component that represents the brightness of the video
CT : blue-yellow (named from protanopia) chroma components
P : red-green (named from protanopia) chroma components
Formal International Standards Bodies
CIE - International Commision on Illumination
Division 1 : Vision and Colour
Division 2 : Measurement of Light and Radiation
Division 8 : Imaging
IEC - International Electrotechnical Commission
TC100/PT61966 - Color Management
ISO - International Standards Organization
TC6 - Paper, board and pulps
TC36 - Cinematography
TC42 - Photography
PMAI - US Technical Advisory Group
PIMA
TC130 - Graphic Arts
NPES - US Technical Advisory Group
ITU - International Telecommunications Union
ITU-R - Radiocommunication Sector
ITU-T - Telecommunication Standardization Sector
SG16 - Study Group 16 - Multimedia services and systems
JTC1 - IEC/ISO Joint Technical Committee 1
SC24 - Computer Graphics and Image Processing
SC28 - Office Equipment
SC29 - JPEG, MPEG, etc.
Industry Consortia & Associations
AIC - International Colour Association
ANSI - American National Standards Institute
APCL - Association of Professional Color Labs
ASTM - American Society for Testing and Materials
ATSC - Advanced Television Systems Committee
CGATS - Committee for Graphic Arts Technologies Standards
DIG - Digital Imaging Group (Home of FlashPix and IIP)
EBU - European Broadcasting Union
EIA - Electronic Industries Association
FOGRA - Forschungsgesellschaft Druck (German graphic arts research institute)
GATF - Graphic Arts Technical Foundation
ICC - International Color Consortium
ISCC - Inter-Society Color Council
IETF - The Internet Engineering Task Force
IFRA - The International Association for Newspaper and Media Technology
JEIDA - Japan Electronic Industry Development Association
JBMA
MITI
NIST - National Institute of Standards and Technology
NPES - The Association for Suppliers of Printing and Publishing Technologies
NTA - The National Technology Alliance
NIDL - The National Information Display Laboratory
PIMA (US TAG for ISO TC42)
PIRA - The Information and Publishing Group
SIGGRAPH - ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics
SMPTE - Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers
SWOP - Specifications Web Offset Publications
TWAIN - Technology (or Toolkit) Without An Interesting Name
UGRA - Verein zur Förderung wissenschaftlicher Untersuchungen in der grafischen Industrie
VESA - Video Electronics Standards Association
VRML - Virtual Reality Meta Language Consortium
W3C - World Wide Web Consortium
Links
Quality and description
Commons:Valued_images
Featured pictures
Commons:Valued_images
General guidelines towards quality (By Arnaud Cheritat)
Linux color management in wikipedia
Comparison_of_color_models_in_computer_graphics
The SSIM Index for Image Quality Assessment
References