Digital BW, The Print

It's not just psychological. It's also physiological as well. Remember,
the human eye is adaptive. The iris is always on the move, adjusting the
amount of light it lets in, and therefore adjusting how bright the area
it is looking at appears.

Depending on the subject, a print can look quite different to a human
when printed small versus printed large, even if it objectively measures
the same "average brightness." It can look both darker and lighter
(depending on subject). It can look more contrasty or washed out
(depending on subject). 

I've got a room that is gray, part of a remodeling job (that got me a
darkroom!). When we got to time to pick colors, the designer sat with us
and we picked colors on paint chips. This gray room, I picked the color.
He asked if that was exactly what I wanted. When I said yes, it pointed
to the chip two levels up from that one and said, paint it that color
and you'll get what you want. I tried it - it's only paint. And he was
right. 

As a block of color takes up your whole field of view, your eye tries to
find a balance. It tries to make really dark colors appear lighter by
opening up the iris. It tries to make really light colors darker by
closing down the iris. The brain tries to compensate and keep the
balance that you "know" is right. 

What makes anyone think that doesn't hold true for photographs?

Don't even get me started on using unsharp masking for small and large
prints...



On Mon, 2004-04-12 at 19:51, Paul D. DeRocco wrote:

> That sounds fishy to me. There may be some psychological effect at work, but
> resizing an image shouldn't change the average brightness of it when
> printed.
> 
> --
> 
> Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
> Paul                mailto:pderocco@...








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