Gamma Applied on Loading Image

[wedfen]

Hi,

I'd like to start saying that some may consider this as NOT a bug yet if all other image viewers behave "the other way" and if re-modifications deteriorate picture quality it's a bug for me like many...

What's? If you ever set a Gamma value in the "VIEWING" section of your settings and perform modifications other than related to color such as crop etc. and try to save your file... Voila you've got your image gamma edited TOO even if it's a "viewing" option...

What others do? Other Viewers simply stick view/gamma settings only for viewing, in case you have no other means of monitor calibration or etc., and apply gamma to file itself if only chosen deliberately via other command, like "Color corrections..." in IrfanView. Why? Because they want user to control his modifications by not auto applying a setting. Many, like IrfanView, have batch processors for that and separate mechanisms of gamma for both viewing and modifying...

In short; a "viewing gamma" setting generally should never modify an image unless it's been authorized, like another setting (in browsing/editing or file handling sections) or user confirmation about the "gamma loop" effect of current IrfanView's "viewing gamma" behavior. The user who wants "modification gamma" can do it so already by "color corrections.." and then save the changed image...

Otherwise "viewing gamma" you set for your viewing easement reflect on image in an harmful loop (all "white" after further modifications) and makes image incompatible for other monitors/systems that you may send your image to since they may also have their "viewing gamma" preferences...

And "please" think troughly and experiment if you have never changed your gamma setting once since only a sufferer may likely to empathize the situation. And for the 'gods' even a simple "not so important" bug rejection is better than "it's perfectly fine" talk...

Anyway, thanks for the program, thanks for the read...

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I can see where you're coming from, but as you say, this is not a bug. This is what the help file says:

Apply gamma correction: Enable it, if you want to change the intensity of each loaded image. The default value is 1.00 (no change), the range is between 0.01 (extreme dark) and 6.99 (extreme bright).

You will notice that if you enable it while an image is loaded, the gamma of the loaded image does not change. You have to reload the image to apply the gamma correction.

What IrfanView saves is the bitmap that is loaded in memory, so if you chose to apply gamma correction on loading, that correction has already been applied and will be saved with the image.

The current behaviour may not be what you expected, but it is clearly what was intended, so it is not a bug.