hardware Adjustments applied during the display of a digital
representation of colour on a screen in order to compensate
monitors (and televisions) produce a light intensity which
is not proportional to the input
voltage. The light
intensity is actually proportional to the input voltage raised
to the inverse power of some constant, called gamma. Its
value varies from one display to another, but is usually
around 2.5.
Because it is more intuitive for the colour components (red,
green and blue) to be varied linearly in the computer, the
must be adjusted in order to make the colour component
intensity on the screen proportional to the value stored in
achieved by a dedicated module in the display hardware which
(particularly those used for
CAD applications) will have a
gamma correction facility.
In combination with the "
white-point" gamma correction is
used to achieve precise colour matching.
(1999-02-01)