No this isn't what it is all about - simply it is an issue of honesty with respect to the business / consumer relationship. Look at it this way say you go out and buy an 8 cylinder car and drive it around for a few weeks and notice that the performance just isn't there. You take a look under the hood and find that instead of a fully assembled 8 cylinder engine you have one with one missing piston.
Would you be mad, upset and would you want it corrected.
Frankly I see the people trying to defend Apple here as being way off base and lacking of back bone. I like my Mac as much as the next guy but that doesn't mean I don't avoid shining a little light on Apples darker side. The same could be said about other bits of promotion by Apple, for example the reference to server grade HD in some of their stuff.
In a nut shell if Apple wants to avoid this sort of suits in the future they best make sure they deliver what they advertise and allude to!
This claim is absolutely correct. The relevant issue here is what the perception of the color on the screen is, not the actual color the screen displays.
Well you can change the argument if you want but I doubt you could win that way. The issue at hand is false advertising, the Apple hardware simply isn't capable of producing the number of colors ADVERTISED. The perception of color had absolutely nothing to do with it.
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The method of how you go about reproducing the image in print media from what you have on the display is completely and totally irrelevant to the point here.
Agreed.
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The simple fact of the matter is that in the world itself, there is no such thing as "color". Color is a percept created by the functioning of the cone receptors in the retina and the resulting information processing of the neural signal created by the transduction of photons into neurological activity through the deformation of the rhodopsin pigments in the short, medium, and long wavelength receptors. Indeed, the visual system itself uses "dithering" to create the range of "color" that we perceive; each cone has a different spectral peak to which it is sensitive. It is differentials in the activations of those three receptors that are the basis of the percept of any given color. So the basis of all color perception is based only on the responses of only three types of receptors in the retina.
Yes, from the technical stand point we process various wave lengths of energy an interpret the results. The interpretation is the realization of color. By saying that color isn't there is like saying there are no high frequency energy supplying the common radio.
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These responses are then interpolated further by the structures in the visual cortex which, to continue to use the computer parlance, is more ?dithering?. Research on color perception and visual neurophysiology has shown that when only a handful of pure wavelengths are displayed, such that there is no continuous frequencies of light contained between them, the visual system will fill in the gaps by activating correlated neurons in the visual cortex that are responsible for creating the perception of those missing colors.
It has also been shown that the greater the number of frequencies in light, the greater the perception of saturation of the color of the light. However, this doesn?t mean that we?re perceiving more colors, we are not. The perception is still based on the responses of three and only three visual receptors, and no amount of increase in the frequencies of light displayed can change that fact. The visual neurons still work the same way, the only difference is how much they respond because of the greater range of frequencies. They still ?dither? the light the receive into the many different colors we perceive.
Once a display displays a range of frequencies that surpasses the ability of the eye to detect differences in the number of frequencies, or the differences in wavelength between them, the issue of how many ?colors? the display produces becomes irrelevant. CRT displays have been able to do that for decades.
This isn't relevant in the context of LCD screens as they certainly haven't exceeded the ability of a human. This doesn't even take into account the vast differences in people and their ability to detect various levels of color.
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People like Clive need to pull their heads out of their arses and get over themselves thinking that the point is how many ?colors? the display actually produces.
Well maybe somebody here needs to pull their own head out of their arse. The only thing that this problem can be reduced to is what was advertised vs what was delivered.
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The idea that anything in the world itself has ?color? is naive and ignorant, as is relying on Wikipedia as an authoritative source to base an argument on. (That also commits the logical fallacy of the appeal to authority.) Actually Clive, you should probably sue God, maybe the Pope while you're at it for their false advertising about how our perception of color in the world is blatant intentional and deceptional false advertising by God and nature...
No more so that trying to pull the discussion away from the facts in the case.
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Also, any ?professional? photographer who takes pride in the fact that they?re a ?professional? would know these simple facts about how humans perceive color, and their concern would be more with the process of how to accurately reproduce in printed media the image they?re concerned with.
Which can be very difficult when one buys hardware that isn't capable of doing what it was advertised to do. Look at it this way, if you purchased the latest Tera Byte disk drive and took it home and installed it an found out that the reality isn't even close to a Tera Byte would you be happy.
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Once you get above a certain level of display quality, the display itself is a non-issue. Again, a large body of psychophysical research on color perception has been done that proves this point, although I?m sure that again, people like Clive will simply choose not to believe this so they can go on with their hating.
First; it simply doesn't matter in this discussion, the whole problem revolves around what was advertised and what was delivered. Here Apple screwed up big time.
Second; there is good reason to believe that current screens don't come close to the point of not being an issue due to their quality. There is a very long ways to go before the display is so good that it is no longer suitable for discussion.
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This lawsuit was nothing more than greed and publicity for the people who filed it.
I can't speak to the motivation of the people involved and doubt you can either. The reality is that this may have some impact in checking Apples questionable advertising. In a nut shell that is the issue at hand, what the display can and can't do is of limited interest.
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It has no basis in empirical fact about how color is perceived by the human visual system.
Again it doesn't matter because the issue isn't one of perception of color but one of truth in advertising.
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I?m amazed that Apple caved on it, and didn?t simply do some reading in scientific journals such as Journal of Experimental Psychology; Human Perception and Performance, or the journal Perception and Psychophysics, or Vision Research.
Simply this; they didn't have a leg to stand on. All the horse crap in the world won't make up for the dishonesty that they have displayed in this matter. In court the issue would come down to the facts. Or at least it should come down to the facts, we all know that the courts often do make mistakes.
It's not 63+63+63, the colors combine together, they don't have to have the same values at the same time. At no point does that make 190 colors, or 190 patterns.
Also, there are 64 combination possible in 6-bit. 0 to 63 inclusive.
The total number of colors is 64*64*64 = 262144 for each cluster of 3 elements, which is what you are describing eventually. but there aren't 190 colors under any measure.
You really didn't get the point about spatial vs temporal dithering did you?
What I find interesting is that technology acceptance has gotten to a point where two self-proclaimed "professional photographers" launched this case on the basis that their livelihood and employment capabilities rely on their ability to use a consumer model (forget about the Pro name for a minute) laptop LCD digital display to attempt to reproduce continuous tone gradations in an image, despite the inherent weaknesses of this methodology.
My whole perception of this case is that they bought something and didn't get what was advertised. Simple as that.
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If the end result of their work was that critical to earning potential, why don't they shoot film and deliver actual continuous-tone "photographs" produced via a darkroom process, not multi-color dithered "images" produced from an ink jet printer. You don't need an LCD-anything to get a real photo from film and chemistry. Anything less than film results in a compromise in ultimate quality.
Maybe because digital produces better results?
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Perhaps their clients should sue them for advertising themselves as "photographers" when in fact they were "image acquisition specialists" who use a camera with digital sensors instead of film to deliver "matrixed color images" as an end result. (Photography by definition requires a camera to expose a light-sensitive material capable of later producing an image as a result of chemical reaction.)
At a fundamental level their isn't that much of a difference in the so called matrixed color images and a photograph. The only advantage that silver based photography has is that it is very easy to increase the amount of information silver can acquire by increasing the size of the detector. For any given silver process there is a limit with respect to the size of the detectors, similar to the limit on pixel size on the various electronic detectors.
With silver I can take the same film type used in a 35 mm camera, and slap it into a medium format camera or an 8x10 for that matter. In any event it it is the end result that counts and 35 mm was eclipsed by digital long ago.
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By calling themselves Photographers and then using a digital image-editing or enhancement process, these two gentlemen appear to be no less guilty of false advertising than Apple, and remarkably, for the same reason: in the photographer business, the "industry standard" has been reduced to what acceptably fools the eye as a final result (especially if it's faster and easier than being really good with film and creative exposure and development techniques).
I suppose that by this logic non silver based methods to "photography" aren't photography either?
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If we've reached the point where computer companies should all be sued because of their somewhat liberal interpretation of specification accuracy, why are we not all suing car manufacturers for ads telling us how many miles per gallon their cars will achieve, when in actuality that's a number relevant only to a stationary laboratory test at a fixed speed?
Liberal! Are you guys all nuts here, it is simple straight forward math.
Are the techniques of dithering, temporal dithering, faster-than-human framrates enough to trick the human eye into believing the display shows millions of colors? In most cases, yes.
So you agree with me. End of "argument". The rest of what you say after his is now irrelevant except for your emotional attachment to not be proven wrong.
Originally I was on the fence, probably veering towards the plaintiffs. After hearing all the arguments and finding out a little more about temporal dithering, I'm inclined to agree that if Apple has only put "millions of colors" but not "8-bit" then they have done nothing worse than many manufacturers.
What I really want to know is - if 6-bit TN screens use temporal dithering, should a human eye be able to distinguish between them and the 8-bit screens? I am typing this on a MacBook. If I tilt the screen away from me (so the image becomes much darker), I can clearly make out dithering - not of a temporal kind but a spatial one. Especially on the drop shadows. Would I not see these on an 8-bit screen?
Whether or not Apple or any display manufacturers advertise their screens as millions or 16.2 million or whatever, I'm a little disappointed this case wasn't used to gain some kind of precedent whereby LCD screens must be sold with more detail on their specification. If a 6-bit screen is supposed to show a detailed full-colour image with no dithering, then either this statement is incorrect or I am looking at a faulty screen.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with my MacBook and its display, it's not off-putting but the dithering most certainly is visible. If this makes up the difference between 6-bit and 8-bit screens then there is most definitely reason to ensure customers know there IS a difference between such screens on the MacBooks and iMacs compared with the Cinema Displays.
Well you can change the argument if you want but I doubt you could win that way. The issue at hand is false advertising, the Apple hardware simply isn't capable of producing the number of colors ADVERTISED. The perception of color had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Agreed.
Yes, from the technical stand point we process various wave lengths of energy an interpret the results. The interpretation is the realization of color. By saying that color isn't there is like saying there are no high frequency energy supplying the common radio.
This isn't relevant in the context of LCD screens as they certainly haven't exceeded the ability of a human. This doesn't even take into account the vast differences in people and their ability to detect various levels of color.
Well maybe somebody here needs to pull their own head out of their arse. The only thing that this problem can be reduced to is what was advertised vs what was delivered.
No more so that trying to pull the discussion away from the facts in the case.
Which can be very difficult when one buys hardware that isn't capable of doing what it was advertised to do. Look at it this way, if you purchased the latest Tera Byte disk drive and took it home and installed it an found out that the reality isn't even close to a Tera Byte would you be happy.
First; it simply doesn't matter in this discussion, the whole problem revolves around what was advertised and what was delivered. Here Apple screwed up big time.
Second; there is good reason to believe that current screens don't come close to the point of not being an issue due to their quality. There is a very long ways to go before the display is so good that it is no longer suitable for discussion.
I can't speak to the motivation of the people involved and doubt you can either. The reality is that this may have some impact in checking Apples questionable advertising. In a nut shell that is the issue at hand, what the display can and can't do is of limited interest.
Again it doesn't matter because the issue isn't one of perception of color but one of truth in advertising.
Simply this; they didn't have a leg to stand on. All the horse crap in the world won't make up for the dishonesty that they have displayed in this matter. In court the issue would come down to the facts. Or at least it should come down to the facts, we all know that the courts often do make mistakes.
Dave
My, so much effort to attempt to refute empirically proven and repeatedly demonstrated scientific fact... the state of science education in America is so woeful these days.
I'm not changing the point, the argument, etc. My point is that it's obvious that the claim made is that we perceive their to be "millions" of colors, and that is indeed what we get, irrelevant of the hardware. As for not exceeding the limits of human vision, wrong. If that were the case, then the kinds of results that show people can and do perceive "millions" of colors from the display would not have been found, let alone replicated in multiple laboratory experiments, with different experimental paradigms and controls, again and again and again.
The deeper issue here is that in our society the letter of the law has become more important than the understanding or the spirit of that law. As one poster earlier said, "Welcome to the society of lawyers". It's too bad that you're one of the people who've fallen into that unfortunate mind-set.
You really didn't get the point about spatial vs temporal dithering did you?
I do get it, but the poster was wrong to claim that the LCD is only capable of producing 192 colors, that's what I was responding to. There are 3 elements who each can produce 64 values, that can't be simplified to say that monitor can only fundamentally produce 192 colors, that's not what the math is.
It's the same as arguing that a piano can only play 88 different sounds.
Also, I doubt it's well understood here what 'dithering' means. Dithering is a computer graphics term that means something very precise, using patterns of multiple pixels and blending them together with others to produce an impression of the a color. It's not specific to LCD panels, it happens before the LCD or CRT, it happens in software.
The lawsuit was about the fact that millions of colors were advertised AND since the colors were implemented as software dithering then even more information was lost. It wouldn't have been so bad if no software dithering had been done.
Again, I wish to be technical and note that the word "Photograph" is photo + graph. Graph = "something written"; photo = photons/light. Ergo, "photograph" litterally means "something written by photons/light." No chemicals required. Until recently, such a technique was our only choice for making a photograph, but that is no longer the case. I see no reason to cease calling a digitally-procured image a photograph, as it was the detection of light which triggered the recording of the device.
-Clive
Just because you elect to be either difficult or ignorant doesn't change the definition of a photograph, Clive. The word "photograph" originated long before anyone knew what photons were. By your definition, a pattern that appears on your crusty bathroom curtains caused by color fading due to sunlight exposure is a photograph.
From the Oxford Dictionary:
photograph |ˈfōtəˌgraf| noun
a picture made using a camera, in which an image is focused onto film or other light-sensitive material and then made visible and permanent by chemical treatment.
You can call a digicam image a photograph all day long, but you're wrong, because a true photograph has continuous tone and is not made up of a matrix of individually colored squares. It's a picture, a bitmap, a raster, popularly known as a snapshot, or technically as a digital image, but the image you view on a computer screen, a laser print, or in a magazine printed in CMYK will not qualify as a photograph.
And you're proving my point: Apple said their laptop was capable of displaying "millions of colors" (which is technically true, because they didn't say anywhere that all of those millions of colors are displayed at the same moment in time) because it has come to be accepted as a nominal specification. If people who don't produce actual photographs can call themselves "Professional Photographers" simply because standards have lowered enough for people like you to accept that as the common definition, why should Apple or any other computer maker not be able to use commonly accepted standards of perceptual vision as a specification?
For that matter, the MacBook Pro is perfectly capable of displaying "millions of colors" on a display connected to it for that specific purpose. I do it every day with a color-corrected EIZO 24" LCD monitor that costs nearly twice what my MBP did. And it (and the work we do on it) looks very professional indeed.
For anyone to buy a lone laptop and then sue the manufacturer because it didn't fully enable them to do precision photography work by itself shows a great degree of un-professionalism on their part. I suppose they could have lawsuits pending against their camera manufacturer because they advertised it had a "built-in flash" but it didn't produce the same light output a professional flash attachment does.
Maybe at a detailed level the technique may differ but doesn't a CRT also only have a limited number of colours which are mixed to create the illusion of millions of colours -- e.g. 3 electron beams each of which energizes a different set of phosphor dots respectively glowing red, green or blue, depending on the energy level of the beam when it hits the dot?
I do get it, but the poster was wrong to claim that the LCD is only capable of producing 192 colors, that's what I was responding to. There are 3 elements who each can produce 64 values, that can't be simplified to say that monitor can only fundamentally produce 192 colors, that's not what the math is.
It's the same as arguing that a piano can only play 88 different sounds.
Also, I doubt it's well understood here what 'dithering' means. Dithering is a computer graphics term that means something very precise, using patterns of multiple pixels and blending them together with others to produce an impression of the a color. It's not specific to LCD panels, it happens before the LCD or CRT, it happens in software.
The lawsuit was about the fact that millions of colors were advertised AND since the colors were implemented as software dithering then even more information was lost. It wouldn't have been so bad if no software dithering had been done.
No, you don't get it. First you can do spatial dithering in hardware in the monitor. Any 6 bit with 2x2 spatial dithering monitor does this...no software on the computer required. Spatial dithering will have a checkerboardish appearance most observable in darker gradients.
Temporal dithering like FRC will vary color quickly back and forth between colors the display can do to approximate a color it can't natively do. As long as you don't get flicker folks don't notice.
All are perceptual tricks to create the perception of color that isn't red, green or blue. Spatial dithering is more apparent because it is larger (not at a sub-pixel level) and more likely in the spatial contrast sensitivity range for an observer. The quantization noise is simply too high to be unobservable especially in darker regions. Even then, a lot of folks don't notice until you tell them what to look for and some not even then.
With respect to color it turns out that if you optimize for very even intensity (equiluminant) chromatic errors, even largish ones, are not visible because of the way human visual systems work. For temporal dithering at 15-20 hz color flicker fusion occurs (ie you get your desired fake colors) as long as the intensities are even. However, luminance imbalance can be perceived even up 50-60 Hz.[1] Which shows up as a nervous, crawly or flickery display...again, most visible in darker regions.
What I didn't pay any attention to is whether the panels used by apple was doing spatial or temporal dithering. 6 bit panels use a few basic strategies to reproduce additional colors beyond their native color-depths.
Are these colors "real"? Mostly. A lot of what we take for granted in displays (computer, TV, movies, analog, digital, etc) are highly efficient visual tricks of the human visual system.
I don't mind that Apple was sued or that Apple settled. I do think that the vehemence that Apple was doing evil by folks like Clive are silly. Like they love being outraged by something Apple did or didn't do. For the general case, those panels did indeed generate millions of colors as percieved by humans. Unless, of course, the panels did their visual tricks poorly. Which is possible too and doing the tricks wrong sometimes result in glaringly obvious artifacts.
[1] Mulligan, 1993 Improving digital halftones by exploiting visual system properties
Maybe these two pricks should have researched things a bit better.
They are "professionals".
They did research it ? Apple claimed the panels were capable of displaying millions of colours and that should be all the research that's required.
Their only mistake, as far as I can see, was trusting Apple.
You can argue about dithering etc. until you are blue in the face, but at the end of the day Apple, like any other manufacturer, has a responsibility to make accurate representations about their products.
In this case, it's obvious that Apple made a claim that simply wasn't true. Calling the two plaintiffs names and questioning their professionalism doesn't change that fact.
Apple have a long culture of making misleading or unquantifiable statements about their products - the 'server grade' hard disk in the Time Capsule is another perfect example. That's another piece of marketing jargon that implies that the Time Capsule offers increased reliability over a product that doesn't feature a server grade hard disk mechanism. If you were to take that to court you'd soon realise that 'server grade' doesn't actually mean anything at all, and if you were to strip-down a Time Capsule you would see that Apple is in fact using a run-of-the-mill hard disk drive that doesn't offer any benefits over any other hard disk drive out there.
I for one am pleased that Apple have been caught with their fingers in the honey jar this time around. I hope that Apple will come to realise that misleading their customers will only damage their brand.
Well, yes there is. Any gradient from black to white will show banding. 62 is not enough greys. However, for the most part temporal dithering takes care of it for all but the most demanding proofing tasks.
They need to get a good old CRT and carry it around with them everywhere you go then. Or maybe get a desktop an expensive LCD and a really large backpack and use it as a laptop. That is effectively what they would have to do to get what they are looking for anyways... since the MBP doesn't come with RAID-5, 16GB RAM, and more than one optical drive, which I'm sure they are stewing over as well.
It would be funny to see what laptops they do buy to replace their less than adequate MBPs. I'd like to see them (I bet they would be new MBPs)
I think the photographers are just looking for a quick buck. I also think apple should disclose this as well though. no big deal... Apple just put 6bit on the box. But if you are a pro you are going to know this and by a secondary screen anyway.
People in America need to get over stuff like this and quit suing. That's my deal (Coffee is Hot!, so what if it is a slighty less red shade of red than you think it should be... dont buy it!, drinking beer doesn't make you get women!, haunted houses are supposed to be scary!, and my favorite... for $2.5 million dollars... The Fear Factor TV show made a man sick to his stomach! Don't watch it!) All laptop screens use technique to make them look better and keep so they can be used as laptop screens... otherwise they wouldn't be very usable for anyone, and everyone would complain and come sue someone just because they can.
America get over your sue crazy attitude. Sue when you have to, not because you just want a quick buck. You are one of the people driving America into the ground and embarrassing the crap out of the rest of us.
File complaints... and if they don't get heard... go somewhere else that will hear you. or wear a bib, you pick. Make capitalism work the way it is supposed to. This is not it for sure.
If Apple is guilty then they need to spread the love and sue all laptop LCD makers... That's what "professionals" do right? Anyone who said those two had done enough research prior to purchasing an Apple laptop (any laptop for that matter) is bs.
Another example of the flood of frivolous lawsuits that US firms must deal with constantly.
As a Canadian, I'm always dismayed by stories like this. And the company being sued generally loses: usually by being forced into a "cheaper" out of court settlement, not out of guilt, merely to avoid an even costlier trial.
Makes ya wonder how much of a premium customers unwittingly pay to offset the barrage of frivolous suits Apple and countless other companies deal with constantly. Claims like this one are nothing short of blackmail, plain and simple. Maybe it's time for legislators to get involved.
If it's a laptop, it has a 6-bit display. I don't think any laptop uses 8-bit displays. Did you ever wonder why Apple's Studio Displays cost 3 times as much those you find at Best Buy? It's because they're using true 8-bit displays.
No, it's because of Apple using *S-IPS panels in the Cinema displays. There are other, much cheaper, panels capable of displaying 8 bits of colour per subpixel.
So you agree with me. End of "argument". The rest of what you say after his is now irrelevant except for your emotional attachment to not be proven wrong.
Oh get real. I'm a Physicist. I LIVE to be proven wrong.
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Originally Posted by Bowser
My, so much effort to attempt to refute empirically proven and repeatedly demonstrated scientific fact... the state of science education in America is so woeful these days.
This statement is laughable. It's physically impossible to "empirically" prove anything about perception! That's why there's a huge debate about whether or not Psychology is actually a "science." Of course you'll maintain that it is because it gives your argument credibility. I, however, can show, physically, why perception cannot be trusted.
Take a look at this photograph:
[CENTER][/CENTER]
Which point, A or B, is quasar 0957+561?
The correct answer is that both points show images of the same quasar. This is not a photoshop trick. Both images are truly the same object. However, that's not the end of the story. Neither point represents the actual location of the quasar.
Somewhere between the observer and the quasar, there exists a large gravitational field which is bending light around it, creating the double-image. The actual position of the quasar is between the two points.
Point is: perception cannot be trusted.
So now tell me: Is {6-bit plus features} truly equivalent to {8-bit native}? The simple fact is, no. The display does not show millions of colors per pixel. It only shows 260,000 or whatever number that is. Now, on how Apple marketed these displays, I cannot comment, so whether these gentlement truly have a case, I do not know. But it must be made clear that perception does not imply truth.
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Originally Posted by zanshin
Just because you elect to be either difficult or ignorant doesn't change the definition of a photograph, Clive.
Just because you elect to cling to an archaic definition doesn't make you ultimate supreme overlord of all that is. It's clear that "photo - graph" means "something written by light." Your gripe about "photons" is immaterial because photo = light, wherein a photon is an elementary "particle" of light. So you can drop that one.
Secondly, your "continous spectrum" argument is bogus as well as everything in this universe is quantized. Space, time, color (photon length). None of them are continuous. Everything proceeds/changes as a series of tiny steps.
The only difference is the size of the quantization. So what if it's shown on a screen, or shown on film, or shown on a shower curtain? It's still a reproduced image whose origin is "recorded" light.
You two gentlemen have very narrow-minded views on your subjects of choice. We have Mr. "Only what we perceive is truth" and Mr. "A photograph is a chemical reaction on film, period." Loosen up, boys. It's time to update your dictionaries.
Point blank - this is another case of yet another company being sued so some lawyer can get rich off of his or her one-time home run. There is absolutely no benefit to the consumer in this case whatsoever. And, is it any surprise the lawsuit comes out of California?
What's next, sue Dell, HP, Toshiba, Sony? Maybe you can sue TV manufacturers too?
Wait, what about McDonalds? Have they REALLY served "billions"? I feel mislead by that statement.
These two 'professional' photographers are likely in cahoots (yes, cahoots) with the attorney filing the lawsuit. Most likely, the attorney thought up the suit and then sought the 'professional photographers' out to be the plaintiffs.
These are the same types of people that buy Apple products, say they are Apple fanatics, but then gripe and bitch over a 15% restocking fee when they decide they really wanted the 'green' iPod. They know the policies, they know the technology, they know the limitations. But, when something doesn't go exactly there way, Apple and Papa Steve somehow 'owe' them something for their loyalty. Humpf!
Oh get real. I'm a Physicist. I LIVE to be proven wrong.
This statement is laughable. It's physically impossible to "empirically" prove anything about perception!
Mkay. So you're saying that all LCD monitors are not actually using visual perception tricks to display color? Whether temporal dithering in 6 bit displays or sub-pixel spatial additive color tricks on 8 bit displays?
That you cannot empirically prove the human visual perceptual limits?
That you cannot empirically show that specific visual techniques work? I'll have to email SMPTE your learned opinion.
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That's why there's a huge debate about whether or not Psychology is actually a "science." Of course you'll maintain that it is because it gives your argument credibility. I, however, can show, physically, why perception cannot be trusted.
This isn't just a branch of cognitive (perceptual) psychology but also physiology. There are physical limits to the human visual system. Then there are all the tricks the brain plays to fill in the gaps. These tricks can be mapped and utilized to create specific, known, outcomes in perception. Or you wouldn't have any movies to watch.
In any case, typically the "huge debate" is carried out by folks holding hard science degrees to feel vaguely superior to folks holding soft science degrees.
It's ironically very human. Folks secure in their own expertise generally do not indulge in penis size/scientific rigor measuring contests because...they don't need to.
But rather accept collegues as equal collegues*.
In any case, I find your reasoning rather limited in this discussion and often find that anyone that declares themselves to be a "physicist" to be a pompous blowhard. Most physicists I know aren't actual practioners in their field but...let's face it...failures in their choosen field and making a living doing something else.
Work at CERN or Fermi? Brookhaven? NASA? JPL? Standford? Anywhere actually DOING physics? No? Then you aren't a "physicist" but a random guy with some sort of physics degree in his past.
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Take a look at this photograph:
Which point, A or B, is quasar 0957+561?
Which has zip to do with human perception of color.
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Point is: perception cannot be trusted.
Point is: your analogy has zip to do with the topic at hand.
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So now tell me: Is {6-bit plus features} truly equivalent to {8-bit native}? The simple fact is, no.
Truly equivalent? No. Functionally equivalent? At least to the point that "millions" of colors are percieved? Yes, depending on the implementation.
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The display does not show millions of colors per pixel. It only shows 260,000 or whatever number that is. Now, on how Apple marketed these displays, I cannot comment, so whether these gentlement truly have a case, I do not know. But it must be made clear that perception does not imply truth.
If you're close enough to the display with sufficient visual acuity then neither does an 8-bit display (show millions of colors per pixel). You see three sub-pixels that are red, green and blue. The visual trick of placing these additive colors sufficiently close to each other for spatial color fusion creates the perception of specific colors. So does temporal color fusion by rapidly changing between close color values to to create the perception of specific colors.
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The only difference is the size of the quantization. So what if it's shown on a screen, or shown on film, or shown on a shower curtain? It's still a reproduced image whose origin is "recorded" light.
If the quantization noise from spatial dithering in a 6-bit + 2 display or 6-bit + FRC is sufficiently small then the reproduced (mental) image is the correct color within the limits of the visual system of the observer (including the "post-processing" done by the brain).
Of course, given a reference (ie 8 bit display next to a 6-bit display) it is easier to see any differences and also in areas where human perception is stronger in detection of visual artifacts.
-v
* I'm just a lowly programmer. I have no delusions of grandeur.
Comments
Thank you.
This is what it is ULTIMATELY about.
Welcome to LAWSUIT NATION.
No this isn't what it is all about - simply it is an issue of honesty with respect to the business / consumer relationship. Look at it this way say you go out and buy an 8 cylinder car and drive it around for a few weeks and notice that the performance just isn't there. You take a look under the hood and find that instead of a fully assembled 8 cylinder engine you have one with one missing piston.
Would you be mad, upset and would you want it corrected.
Frankly I see the people trying to defend Apple here as being way off base and lacking of back bone. I like my Mac as much as the next guy but that doesn't mean I don't avoid shining a little light on Apples darker side. The same could be said about other bits of promotion by Apple, for example the reference to server grade HD in some of their stuff.
In a nut shell if Apple wants to avoid this sort of suits in the future they best make sure they deliver what they advertise and allude to!
Dave
Any of you got contacted to join?
This is one I certainty think Apple needs to fix, a Pro system should offer a PRO a system that is designed for PROs.
This claim is absolutely correct. The relevant issue here is what the perception of the color on the screen is, not the actual color the screen displays.
Well you can change the argument if you want but I doubt you could win that way. The issue at hand is false advertising, the Apple hardware simply isn't capable of producing the number of colors ADVERTISED. The perception of color had absolutely nothing to do with it.
The method of how you go about reproducing the image in print media from what you have on the display is completely and totally irrelevant to the point here.
Agreed.
The simple fact of the matter is that in the world itself, there is no such thing as "color". Color is a percept created by the functioning of the cone receptors in the retina and the resulting information processing of the neural signal created by the transduction of photons into neurological activity through the deformation of the rhodopsin pigments in the short, medium, and long wavelength receptors. Indeed, the visual system itself uses "dithering" to create the range of "color" that we perceive; each cone has a different spectral peak to which it is sensitive. It is differentials in the activations of those three receptors that are the basis of the percept of any given color. So the basis of all color perception is based only on the responses of only three types of receptors in the retina.
Yes, from the technical stand point we process various wave lengths of energy an interpret the results. The interpretation is the realization of color. By saying that color isn't there is like saying there are no high frequency energy supplying the common radio.
These responses are then interpolated further by the structures in the visual cortex which, to continue to use the computer parlance, is more ?dithering?. Research on color perception and visual neurophysiology has shown that when only a handful of pure wavelengths are displayed, such that there is no continuous frequencies of light contained between them, the visual system will fill in the gaps by activating correlated neurons in the visual cortex that are responsible for creating the perception of those missing colors.
It has also been shown that the greater the number of frequencies in light, the greater the perception of saturation of the color of the light. However, this doesn?t mean that we?re perceiving more colors, we are not. The perception is still based on the responses of three and only three visual receptors, and no amount of increase in the frequencies of light displayed can change that fact. The visual neurons still work the same way, the only difference is how much they respond because of the greater range of frequencies. They still ?dither? the light the receive into the many different colors we perceive.
Once a display displays a range of frequencies that surpasses the ability of the eye to detect differences in the number of frequencies, or the differences in wavelength between them, the issue of how many ?colors? the display produces becomes irrelevant. CRT displays have been able to do that for decades.
This isn't relevant in the context of LCD screens as they certainly haven't exceeded the ability of a human. This doesn't even take into account the vast differences in people and their ability to detect various levels of color.
People like Clive need to pull their heads out of their arses and get over themselves thinking that the point is how many ?colors? the display actually produces.
Well maybe somebody here needs to pull their own head out of their arse. The only thing that this problem can be reduced to is what was advertised vs what was delivered.
The idea that anything in the world itself has ?color? is naive and ignorant, as is relying on Wikipedia as an authoritative source to base an argument on. (That also commits the logical fallacy of the appeal to authority.) Actually Clive, you should probably sue God, maybe the Pope while you're at it for their false advertising about how our perception of color in the world is blatant intentional and deceptional false advertising by God and nature...
No more so that trying to pull the discussion away from the facts in the case.
Also, any ?professional? photographer who takes pride in the fact that they?re a ?professional? would know these simple facts about how humans perceive color, and their concern would be more with the process of how to accurately reproduce in printed media the image they?re concerned with.
Which can be very difficult when one buys hardware that isn't capable of doing what it was advertised to do. Look at it this way, if you purchased the latest Tera Byte disk drive and took it home and installed it an found out that the reality isn't even close to a Tera Byte would you be happy.
Once you get above a certain level of display quality, the display itself is a non-issue. Again, a large body of psychophysical research on color perception has been done that proves this point, although I?m sure that again, people like Clive will simply choose not to believe this so they can go on with their hating.
First; it simply doesn't matter in this discussion, the whole problem revolves around what was advertised and what was delivered. Here Apple screwed up big time.
Second; there is good reason to believe that current screens don't come close to the point of not being an issue due to their quality. There is a very long ways to go before the display is so good that it is no longer suitable for discussion.
This lawsuit was nothing more than greed and publicity for the people who filed it.
I can't speak to the motivation of the people involved and doubt you can either. The reality is that this may have some impact in checking Apples questionable advertising. In a nut shell that is the issue at hand, what the display can and can't do is of limited interest.
It has no basis in empirical fact about how color is perceived by the human visual system.
Again it doesn't matter because the issue isn't one of perception of color but one of truth in advertising.
I?m amazed that Apple caved on it, and didn?t simply do some reading in scientific journals such as Journal of Experimental Psychology; Human Perception and Performance, or the journal Perception and Psychophysics, or Vision Research.
Simply this; they didn't have a leg to stand on. All the horse crap in the world won't make up for the dishonesty that they have displayed in this matter. In court the issue would come down to the facts. Or at least it should come down to the facts, we all know that the courts often do make mistakes.
Dave
It's not 63+63+63, the colors combine together, they don't have to have the same values at the same time. At no point does that make 190 colors, or 190 patterns.
Also, there are 64 combination possible in 6-bit. 0 to 63 inclusive.
The total number of colors is 64*64*64 = 262144 for each cluster of 3 elements, which is what you are describing eventually. but there aren't 190 colors under any measure.
You really didn't get the point about spatial vs temporal dithering did you?
What I find interesting is that technology acceptance has gotten to a point where two self-proclaimed "professional photographers" launched this case on the basis that their livelihood and employment capabilities rely on their ability to use a consumer model (forget about the Pro name for a minute) laptop LCD digital display to attempt to reproduce continuous tone gradations in an image, despite the inherent weaknesses of this methodology.
My whole perception of this case is that they bought something and didn't get what was advertised. Simple as that.
If the end result of their work was that critical to earning potential, why don't they shoot film and deliver actual continuous-tone "photographs" produced via a darkroom process, not multi-color dithered "images" produced from an ink jet printer. You don't need an LCD-anything to get a real photo from film and chemistry. Anything less than film results in a compromise in ultimate quality.
Maybe because digital produces better results?
Perhaps their clients should sue them for advertising themselves as "photographers" when in fact they were "image acquisition specialists" who use a camera with digital sensors instead of film to deliver "matrixed color images" as an end result. (Photography by definition requires a camera to expose a light-sensitive material capable of later producing an image as a result of chemical reaction.)
At a fundamental level their isn't that much of a difference in the so called matrixed color images and a photograph. The only advantage that silver based photography has is that it is very easy to increase the amount of information silver can acquire by increasing the size of the detector. For any given silver process there is a limit with respect to the size of the detectors, similar to the limit on pixel size on the various electronic detectors.
With silver I can take the same film type used in a 35 mm camera, and slap it into a medium format camera or an 8x10 for that matter. In any event it it is the end result that counts and 35 mm was eclipsed by digital long ago.
By calling themselves Photographers and then using a digital image-editing or enhancement process, these two gentlemen appear to be no less guilty of false advertising than Apple, and remarkably, for the same reason: in the photographer business, the "industry standard" has been reduced to what acceptably fools the eye as a final result (especially if it's faster and easier than being really good with film and creative exposure and development techniques).
I suppose that by this logic non silver based methods to "photography" aren't photography either?
If we've reached the point where computer companies should all be sued because of their somewhat liberal interpretation of specification accuracy, why are we not all suing car manufacturers for ads telling us how many miles per gallon their cars will achieve, when in actuality that's a number relevant only to a stationary laboratory test at a fixed speed?
Liberal! Are you guys all nuts here, it is simple straight forward math.
Dave
Are the techniques of dithering, temporal dithering, faster-than-human framrates enough to trick the human eye into believing the display shows millions of colors? In most cases, yes.
So you agree with me. End of "argument". The rest of what you say after his is now irrelevant except for your emotional attachment to not be proven wrong.
Originally I was on the fence, probably veering towards the plaintiffs. After hearing all the arguments and finding out a little more about temporal dithering, I'm inclined to agree that if Apple has only put "millions of colors" but not "8-bit" then they have done nothing worse than many manufacturers.
Interesting article excerpt here: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/oth...-guide_11.html
What I really want to know is - if 6-bit TN screens use temporal dithering, should a human eye be able to distinguish between them and the 8-bit screens? I am typing this on a MacBook. If I tilt the screen away from me (so the image becomes much darker), I can clearly make out dithering - not of a temporal kind but a spatial one. Especially on the drop shadows. Would I not see these on an 8-bit screen?
Whether or not Apple or any display manufacturers advertise their screens as millions or 16.2 million or whatever, I'm a little disappointed this case wasn't used to gain some kind of precedent whereby LCD screens must be sold with more detail on their specification. If a 6-bit screen is supposed to show a detailed full-colour image with no dithering, then either this statement is incorrect or I am looking at a faulty screen.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with my MacBook and its display, it's not off-putting but the dithering most certainly is visible. If this makes up the difference between 6-bit and 8-bit screens then there is most definitely reason to ensure customers know there IS a difference between such screens on the MacBooks and iMacs compared with the Cinema Displays.
Well you can change the argument if you want but I doubt you could win that way. The issue at hand is false advertising, the Apple hardware simply isn't capable of producing the number of colors ADVERTISED. The perception of color had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Agreed.
Yes, from the technical stand point we process various wave lengths of energy an interpret the results. The interpretation is the realization of color. By saying that color isn't there is like saying there are no high frequency energy supplying the common radio.
This isn't relevant in the context of LCD screens as they certainly haven't exceeded the ability of a human. This doesn't even take into account the vast differences in people and their ability to detect various levels of color.
Well maybe somebody here needs to pull their own head out of their arse. The only thing that this problem can be reduced to is what was advertised vs what was delivered.
No more so that trying to pull the discussion away from the facts in the case.
Which can be very difficult when one buys hardware that isn't capable of doing what it was advertised to do. Look at it this way, if you purchased the latest Tera Byte disk drive and took it home and installed it an found out that the reality isn't even close to a Tera Byte would you be happy.
First; it simply doesn't matter in this discussion, the whole problem revolves around what was advertised and what was delivered. Here Apple screwed up big time.
Second; there is good reason to believe that current screens don't come close to the point of not being an issue due to their quality. There is a very long ways to go before the display is so good that it is no longer suitable for discussion.
I can't speak to the motivation of the people involved and doubt you can either. The reality is that this may have some impact in checking Apples questionable advertising. In a nut shell that is the issue at hand, what the display can and can't do is of limited interest.
Again it doesn't matter because the issue isn't one of perception of color but one of truth in advertising.
Simply this; they didn't have a leg to stand on. All the horse crap in the world won't make up for the dishonesty that they have displayed in this matter. In court the issue would come down to the facts. Or at least it should come down to the facts, we all know that the courts often do make mistakes.
Dave
My, so much effort to attempt to refute empirically proven and repeatedly demonstrated scientific fact... the state of science education in America is so woeful these days.
I'm not changing the point, the argument, etc. My point is that it's obvious that the claim made is that we perceive their to be "millions" of colors, and that is indeed what we get, irrelevant of the hardware. As for not exceeding the limits of human vision, wrong. If that were the case, then the kinds of results that show people can and do perceive "millions" of colors from the display would not have been found, let alone replicated in multiple laboratory experiments, with different experimental paradigms and controls, again and again and again.
The deeper issue here is that in our society the letter of the law has become more important than the understanding or the spirit of that law. As one poster earlier said, "Welcome to the society of lawyers". It's too bad that you're one of the people who've fallen into that unfortunate mind-set.
You really didn't get the point about spatial vs temporal dithering did you?
I do get it, but the poster was wrong to claim that the LCD is only capable of producing 192 colors, that's what I was responding to. There are 3 elements who each can produce 64 values, that can't be simplified to say that monitor can only fundamentally produce 192 colors, that's not what the math is.
It's the same as arguing that a piano can only play 88 different sounds.
Also, I doubt it's well understood here what 'dithering' means. Dithering is a computer graphics term that means something very precise, using patterns of multiple pixels and blending them together with others to produce an impression of the a color. It's not specific to LCD panels, it happens before the LCD or CRT, it happens in software.
The lawsuit was about the fact that millions of colors were advertised AND since the colors were implemented as software dithering then even more information was lost. It wouldn't have been so bad if no software dithering had been done.
Again, I wish to be technical and note that the word "Photograph" is photo + graph. Graph = "something written"; photo = photons/light. Ergo, "photograph" litterally means "something written by photons/light." No chemicals required. Until recently, such a technique was our only choice for making a photograph, but that is no longer the case. I see no reason to cease calling a digitally-procured image a photograph, as it was the detection of light which triggered the recording of the device.
-Clive
Just because you elect to be either difficult or ignorant doesn't change the definition of a photograph, Clive. The word "photograph" originated long before anyone knew what photons were. By your definition, a pattern that appears on your crusty bathroom curtains caused by color fading due to sunlight exposure is a photograph.
From the Oxford Dictionary:
photograph |ˈfōtəˌgraf| noun
a picture made using a camera, in which an image is focused onto film or other light-sensitive material and then made visible and permanent by chemical treatment.
You can call a digicam image a photograph all day long, but you're wrong, because a true photograph has continuous tone and is not made up of a matrix of individually colored squares. It's a picture, a bitmap, a raster, popularly known as a snapshot, or technically as a digital image, but the image you view on a computer screen, a laser print, or in a magazine printed in CMYK will not qualify as a photograph.
And you're proving my point: Apple said their laptop was capable of displaying "millions of colors" (which is technically true, because they didn't say anywhere that all of those millions of colors are displayed at the same moment in time) because it has come to be accepted as a nominal specification. If people who don't produce actual photographs can call themselves "Professional Photographers" simply because standards have lowered enough for people like you to accept that as the common definition, why should Apple or any other computer maker not be able to use commonly accepted standards of perceptual vision as a specification?
For that matter, the MacBook Pro is perfectly capable of displaying "millions of colors" on a display connected to it for that specific purpose. I do it every day with a color-corrected EIZO 24" LCD monitor that costs nearly twice what my MBP did. And it (and the work we do on it) looks very professional indeed.
For anyone to buy a lone laptop and then sue the manufacturer because it didn't fully enable them to do precision photography work by itself shows a great degree of un-professionalism on their part. I suppose they could have lawsuits pending against their camera manufacturer because they advertised it had a "built-in flash" but it didn't produce the same light output a professional flash attachment does.
I do get it, but the poster was wrong to claim that the LCD is only capable of producing 192 colors, that's what I was responding to. There are 3 elements who each can produce 64 values, that can't be simplified to say that monitor can only fundamentally produce 192 colors, that's not what the math is.
It's the same as arguing that a piano can only play 88 different sounds.
Also, I doubt it's well understood here what 'dithering' means. Dithering is a computer graphics term that means something very precise, using patterns of multiple pixels and blending them together with others to produce an impression of the a color. It's not specific to LCD panels, it happens before the LCD or CRT, it happens in software.
The lawsuit was about the fact that millions of colors were advertised AND since the colors were implemented as software dithering then even more information was lost. It wouldn't have been so bad if no software dithering had been done.
No, you don't get it. First you can do spatial dithering in hardware in the monitor. Any 6 bit with 2x2 spatial dithering monitor does this...no software on the computer required. Spatial dithering will have a checkerboardish appearance most observable in darker gradients.
Temporal dithering like FRC will vary color quickly back and forth between colors the display can do to approximate a color it can't natively do. As long as you don't get flicker folks don't notice.
All are perceptual tricks to create the perception of color that isn't red, green or blue. Spatial dithering is more apparent because it is larger (not at a sub-pixel level) and more likely in the spatial contrast sensitivity range for an observer. The quantization noise is simply too high to be unobservable especially in darker regions. Even then, a lot of folks don't notice until you tell them what to look for and some not even then.
With respect to color it turns out that if you optimize for very even intensity (equiluminant) chromatic errors, even largish ones, are not visible because of the way human visual systems work. For temporal dithering at 15-20 hz color flicker fusion occurs (ie you get your desired fake colors) as long as the intensities are even. However, luminance imbalance can be perceived even up 50-60 Hz.[1] Which shows up as a nervous, crawly or flickery display...again, most visible in darker regions.
What I didn't pay any attention to is whether the panels used by apple was doing spatial or temporal dithering. 6 bit panels use a few basic strategies to reproduce additional colors beyond their native color-depths.
Are these colors "real"? Mostly. A lot of what we take for granted in displays (computer, TV, movies, analog, digital, etc) are highly efficient visual tricks of the human visual system.
I don't mind that Apple was sued or that Apple settled. I do think that the vehemence that Apple was doing evil by folks like Clive are silly. Like they love being outraged by something Apple did or didn't do. For the general case, those panels did indeed generate millions of colors as percieved by humans. Unless, of course, the panels did their visual tricks poorly. Which is possible too and doing the tricks wrong sometimes result in glaringly obvious artifacts.
[1] Mulligan, 1993 Improving digital halftones by exploiting visual system properties
Maybe these two pricks should have researched things a bit better.
They are "professionals".
They did research it ? Apple claimed the panels were capable of displaying millions of colours and that should be all the research that's required.
Their only mistake, as far as I can see, was trusting Apple.
You can argue about dithering etc. until you are blue in the face, but at the end of the day Apple, like any other manufacturer, has a responsibility to make accurate representations about their products.
In this case, it's obvious that Apple made a claim that simply wasn't true. Calling the two plaintiffs names and questioning their professionalism doesn't change that fact.
Apple have a long culture of making misleading or unquantifiable statements about their products - the 'server grade' hard disk in the Time Capsule is another perfect example. That's another piece of marketing jargon that implies that the Time Capsule offers increased reliability over a product that doesn't feature a server grade hard disk mechanism. If you were to take that to court you'd soon realise that 'server grade' doesn't actually mean anything at all, and if you were to strip-down a Time Capsule you would see that Apple is in fact using a run-of-the-mill hard disk drive that doesn't offer any benefits over any other hard disk drive out there.
I for one am pleased that Apple have been caught with their fingers in the honey jar this time around. I hope that Apple will come to realise that misleading their customers will only damage their brand.
Well, yes there is. Any gradient from black to white will show banding. 62 is not enough greys. However, for the most part temporal dithering takes care of it for all but the most demanding proofing tasks.
They need to get a good old CRT and carry it around with them everywhere you go then. Or maybe get a desktop an expensive LCD and a really large backpack and use it as a laptop. That is effectively what they would have to do to get what they are looking for anyways... since the MBP doesn't come with RAID-5, 16GB RAM, and more than one optical drive, which I'm sure they are stewing over as well.
It would be funny to see what laptops they do buy to replace their less than adequate MBPs. I'd like to see them
I think the photographers are just looking for a quick buck. I also think apple should disclose this as well though. no big deal... Apple just put 6bit on the box. But if you are a pro you are going to know this and by a secondary screen anyway.
People in America need to get over stuff like this and quit suing. That's my deal (Coffee is Hot!, so what if it is a slighty less red shade of red than you think it should be... dont buy it!, drinking beer doesn't make you get women!, haunted houses are supposed to be scary!, and my favorite... for $2.5 million dollars... The Fear Factor TV show made a man sick to his stomach! Don't watch it!) All laptop screens use technique to make them look better and keep so they can be used as laptop screens... otherwise they wouldn't be very usable for anyone, and everyone would complain and come sue someone just because they can.
America get over your sue crazy attitude. Sue when you have to, not because you just want a quick buck. You are one of the people driving America into the ground and embarrassing the crap out of the rest of us.
File complaints... and if they don't get heard... go somewhere else that will hear you. or wear a bib, you pick. Make capitalism work the way it is supposed to. This is not it for sure.
'nuff said!
If Apple is guilty then they need to spread the love and sue all laptop LCD makers... That's what "professionals" do right? Anyone who said those two had done enough research prior to purchasing an Apple laptop (any laptop for that matter) is bs.
As a Canadian, I'm always dismayed by stories like this. And the company being sued generally loses: usually by being forced into a "cheaper" out of court settlement, not out of guilt, merely to avoid an even costlier trial.
Makes ya wonder how much of a premium customers unwittingly pay to offset the barrage of frivolous suits Apple and countless other companies deal with constantly. Claims like this one are nothing short of blackmail, plain and simple. Maybe it's time for legislators to get involved.
If it's a laptop, it has a 6-bit display. I don't think any laptop uses 8-bit displays. Did you ever wonder why Apple's Studio Displays cost 3 times as much those you find at Best Buy? It's because they're using true 8-bit displays.
No, it's because of Apple using *S-IPS panels in the Cinema displays. There are other, much cheaper, panels capable of displaying 8 bits of colour per subpixel.
/Adrian
So you agree with me. End of "argument". The rest of what you say after his is now irrelevant except for your emotional attachment to not be proven wrong.
Oh get real. I'm a Physicist. I LIVE to be proven wrong.
My, so much effort to attempt to refute empirically proven and repeatedly demonstrated scientific fact... the state of science education in America is so woeful these days.
This statement is laughable. It's physically impossible to "empirically" prove anything about perception! That's why there's a huge debate about whether or not Psychology is actually a "science." Of course you'll maintain that it is because it gives your argument credibility. I, however, can show, physically, why perception cannot be trusted.
Take a look at this photograph:
[CENTER]
Which point, A or B, is quasar 0957+561?
The correct answer is that both points show images of the same quasar. This is not a photoshop trick. Both images are truly the same object. However, that's not the end of the story. Neither point represents the actual location of the quasar.
Somewhere between the observer and the quasar, there exists a large gravitational field which is bending light around it, creating the double-image. The actual position of the quasar is between the two points.
Point is: perception cannot be trusted.
So now tell me: Is {6-bit plus features} truly equivalent to {8-bit native}? The simple fact is, no. The display does not show millions of colors per pixel. It only shows 260,000 or whatever number that is. Now, on how Apple marketed these displays, I cannot comment, so whether these gentlement truly have a case, I do not know. But it must be made clear that perception does not imply truth.
Just because you elect to be either difficult or ignorant doesn't change the definition of a photograph, Clive.
Just because you elect to cling to an archaic definition doesn't make you ultimate supreme overlord of all that is. It's clear that "photo - graph" means "something written by light." Your gripe about "photons" is immaterial because photo = light, wherein a photon is an elementary "particle" of light. So you can drop that one.
Secondly, your "continous spectrum" argument is bogus as well as everything in this universe is quantized. Space, time, color (photon length). None of them are continuous. Everything proceeds/changes as a series of tiny steps.
The only difference is the size of the quantization. So what if it's shown on a screen, or shown on film, or shown on a shower curtain? It's still a reproduced image whose origin is "recorded" light.
You two gentlemen have very narrow-minded views on your subjects of choice. We have Mr. "Only what we perceive is truth" and Mr. "A photograph is a chemical reaction on film, period." Loosen up, boys. It's time to update your dictionaries.
-Clive
What's next, sue Dell, HP, Toshiba, Sony? Maybe you can sue TV manufacturers too?
Wait, what about McDonalds? Have they REALLY served "billions"? I feel mislead by that statement.
These two 'professional' photographers are likely in cahoots (yes, cahoots) with the attorney filing the lawsuit. Most likely, the attorney thought up the suit and then sought the 'professional photographers' out to be the plaintiffs.
These are the same types of people that buy Apple products, say they are Apple fanatics, but then gripe and bitch over a 15% restocking fee when they decide they really wanted the 'green' iPod. They know the policies, they know the technology, they know the limitations. But, when something doesn't go exactly there way, Apple and Papa Steve somehow 'owe' them something for their loyalty. Humpf!
-JSA
Oh get real. I'm a Physicist. I LIVE to be proven wrong.
This statement is laughable. It's physically impossible to "empirically" prove anything about perception!
Mkay. So you're saying that all LCD monitors are not actually using visual perception tricks to display color? Whether temporal dithering in 6 bit displays or sub-pixel spatial additive color tricks on 8 bit displays?
That you cannot empirically prove the human visual perceptual limits?
That you cannot empirically show that specific visual techniques work? I'll have to email SMPTE your learned opinion.
That's why there's a huge debate about whether or not Psychology is actually a "science." Of course you'll maintain that it is because it gives your argument credibility. I, however, can show, physically, why perception cannot be trusted.
This isn't just a branch of cognitive (perceptual) psychology but also physiology. There are physical limits to the human visual system. Then there are all the tricks the brain plays to fill in the gaps. These tricks can be mapped and utilized to create specific, known, outcomes in perception. Or you wouldn't have any movies to watch.
In any case, typically the "huge debate" is carried out by folks holding hard science degrees to feel vaguely superior to folks holding soft science degrees.
It's ironically very human. Folks secure in their own expertise generally do not indulge in penis size/scientific rigor measuring contests because...they don't need to.
But rather accept collegues as equal collegues*.
In any case, I find your reasoning rather limited in this discussion and often find that anyone that declares themselves to be a "physicist" to be a pompous blowhard. Most physicists I know aren't actual practioners in their field but...let's face it...failures in their choosen field and making a living doing something else.
Work at CERN or Fermi? Brookhaven? NASA? JPL? Standford? Anywhere actually DOING physics? No? Then you aren't a "physicist" but a random guy with some sort of physics degree in his past.
Take a look at this photograph:
Which point, A or B, is quasar 0957+561?
Which has zip to do with human perception of color.
Point is: perception cannot be trusted.
Point is: your analogy has zip to do with the topic at hand.
So now tell me: Is {6-bit plus features} truly equivalent to {8-bit native}? The simple fact is, no.
Truly equivalent? No. Functionally equivalent? At least to the point that "millions" of colors are percieved? Yes, depending on the implementation.
The display does not show millions of colors per pixel. It only shows 260,000 or whatever number that is. Now, on how Apple marketed these displays, I cannot comment, so whether these gentlement truly have a case, I do not know. But it must be made clear that perception does not imply truth.
If you're close enough to the display with sufficient visual acuity then neither does an 8-bit display (show millions of colors per pixel). You see three sub-pixels that are red, green and blue. The visual trick of placing these additive colors sufficiently close to each other for spatial color fusion creates the perception of specific colors. So does temporal color fusion by rapidly changing between close color values to to create the perception of specific colors.
The only difference is the size of the quantization. So what if it's shown on a screen, or shown on film, or shown on a shower curtain? It's still a reproduced image whose origin is "recorded" light.
If the quantization noise from spatial dithering in a 6-bit + 2 display or 6-bit + FRC is sufficiently small then the reproduced (mental) image is the correct color within the limits of the visual system of the observer (including the "post-processing" done by the brain).
Of course, given a reference (ie 8 bit display next to a 6-bit display) it is easier to see any differences and also in areas where human perception is stronger in detection of visual artifacts.
-v
* I'm just a lowly programmer. I have no delusions of grandeur.