In our dynamic range compression algorithm,
we have exploited the fact that humans are insensitive to relative and absolute differences in luminance.
For example,
we can see that it is brighter outside than inside on a sunny day,
but we cannot tell how much brighter (three times or 100) or what the actual luminances are (10 cd/m2 or 10,000).
With the additional display range made available by adjusting the histogram to close the gaps between
luminance levels,
visibility (i.e., contrast) within each level can be properly preserved.
Furthermore,
this is done in a way that is compatible with subjective aspects of vision.
In the development sections,
two synthetic scenes have served as examples.
In this section,
we show results from two different application areas—lighting simulation using Radiance,
and electronic photography.