What an unprocessed photo looks like:
Dec 27, 2025
Here’s a photo of a Christmas tree, as my camera’s sensor sees it:
Sensor data with the 14 bit ADC values mapped to 0-255 RGB.
It’s not even black-and-white, it’s gray-and-gray. This is becuase while the ADC’s output can theoretically go from 0 to 16382, the actual data doesn’t cover that whole range:
Histogram of raw image
The real range of ADC values is ~2110 to ~136000. Let’s set those values as the white and black in the image:
V new = (V old - Black)/(White - Black)
Progress
Much better, but it’s still more monochromatic then I remember the tree being. Camera sensors aren’t actually able to see color: They only measure how much light hit each pixel.
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