Gammacorrected

Gammacorrected, or gamma-corrected, refers to data or signals that have undergone gamma encoding, a nonlinear transformation applied to luminance or color values in imaging and display pipelines. The purpose is to match the nonlinearity of display devices and human vision, improving perceptual uniformity and the efficient use of digital storage.

Technically, gamma correction uses a power-law transfer function. In its common form, encoded_value = linear_value^gamma, where linear_value represents scene-referred luminance (0 to 1) and gamma is typically greater than 1, often around 2.2 for many displays. The inverse operation, decoding (or applying the display’s electro-optical transfer function), restores linear light by taking the encoded value to the power of 1/gamma. Sophisticated standards, such as sRGB, use a piecewise transfer function that approximates a gamma-like curve with a linear segment near zero.

In practice, gammacorrected data are easier to store and transmit because human vision is more sensitive to relative differences in darker tones, and because nonlinear encoding reduces visible banding in quantized images. However, most image processing is more accurate in linear space, where light combines additively. Therefore, typical workflows involve decoding gamma-corrected data to linear light for processing, then re-applying gamma encoding before display.

Applications span photography, video, computer graphics, and display technology. Cameras capture in a linear or quasi-linear space but store data gamma-corrected for efficient bit-depth usage; displays expect gamma-corrected input to appear correctly to the viewer. As displays evolve toward higher dynamic range and wide color gamuts, more complex transfer functions may be used, but the underlying principle of gamma correction remains to align digital representation with perceptual response.