{"id":699,"date":"2013-05-31T02:45:18","date_gmt":"2013-05-31T02:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lousodrome.net\/blog\/light\/?p=699"},"modified":"2013-05-31T02:45:18","modified_gmt":"2013-05-31T02:45:18","slug":"the-effect-of-quantization-in-gamma-space-and-linear-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lousodrome.net\/blog\/light\/2013\/05\/31\/the-effect-of-quantization-in-gamma-space-and-linear-space\/","title":{"rendered":"The effect of quantization in gamma space and linear space"},"content":{"rendered":"

I mentioned already (here <\/a>and here<\/a>) that one problem with gamma correct rendering is how we lose prevision for small values, and may run out of it if we didn’t have enough of it. I wrote a quick shader to demonstrate this problem and see how severe it is depending on the number of bits.<\/p>\n

Thanks to BeautyPi<\/a>‘s fantastic tool, ShaderToy<\/a>, I could put it on line. Here is the live demo with an absurdly low precision format (R5G6B5) so you cannot miss the banding; just press the play button. It displays colors with maximum and low precision, in linear space and gamma space. The lighter vertical line shows the 50% intensity position. You can see the shader and play with the values here<\/a>.<\/p>\n