Preferential tone scale for electronic displays

Abstract

A method of displaying on a display a visual reproduction of an original scene with a preferential tone mapping; said display having a selected display white point and a selected display black point separated by more than 3.5 decades of luminance; the method comprising the steps of capturing original scene parameters, performing a transformation on said captured scene parameters, and displaying a visual reproduction of the scene on the display from the transformed captured scene parameters; wherein said transformation, taken in conjunction with untransformed characteristics of the capturing and displaying steps, results in a reproduced tone mapping having: a. a dynamic range greater than 3.5 decades; b. a first derivative value of minus log reproduced luminance relative to log original scene luminance between −1.1 and −1.51 inclusive for a log scene luminance of −0.6, measured relative to a 100% diffuse reflector in the original scene; c. a first derivative value less than or equal to −1.9 and greater than −4.0 for a log scene luminance of −1.9; d. a first derivative value between −1.5 and −3.0 inclusive for a log scene luminance of −2.0; and e. a first derivative value at a log scene luminance of −2.5 greater than the first derivative value at a log scene luminance of −2.0.