Digital Photography Explained

The book further expounds on procedures that are necessary to obtain true color images. For example, CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) sensors are equipped with color filters such that the intensity of the red, green and blue colors are recorded separately. Since the colors must be combined for print and digital displays, the separate colors recorded in the camera must somehow be merged. This process known as demosaicing is vividly explained. In fact, the technology for defining colors is a separate issue that is also treated in this book.

Readers will learn that both our vision and computer displays respond in a nonlinear fashion that requires an operation known as gamma mapping, which is built into all monitors. An important takeaway for camera and photography enthusiasts is that in order to avoid moiré effects in certain types of photographs, most cameras have an anti-aliasing filter that has the unfortunate effect of smearing the resolution. This filter can, however, be removed in certain high-end cameras.