Preferred Tone Reproduction of Images on Soft Displays

A series of psychophysical experiments have been carried out to investigate the preferred subjective contrast of displayed images. The contrast of the displayed images was evaluated with the use of a gamma model which involved cascading the gamma values of the individual components of the imaging system. The preferred contrast was found to be scene dependent and varied between 1.56 and 1.96 when images where viewed in total darkness. Probit analysis on the distributions of preferred gamma values showed that the probits of those scenes which had extremes in contrast were outside the confidence limits of other more representative scenes. The validity and implications of applying the gamma model to determine the tone reproduction of an imaging system has been investigated.