Welcome to PhotoNotes !

This is Achille’s knowledge base about photography.

Purpose

1. Understanding the info better
   • Writing things down manually make me understand concepts and remember them better
2. A nice personal reference I can go back to
3. A sharing platform when talking about photography to friends

Motivation

When using Ansel and Darktable, I made some mistakes and did not understand the tools’ functions. I read in the docs that the software is destined to more technical users.
I realized I needed to know more about photography if I was to progress in the domain.

Rules

• No copy-paste ! Every word must be written and formulated from memory.
  • This means that some info can be false. It shows my previous understanding and motivates correction. The uncertain sections are highlighted.
• Schematics can be re-created instead of copied, for example using Excalidraw.
• Insert sources to go back and read, at minima at the end of the article, possibly in obsidian footnotes¹

Goals

The global goal is to get better at digital photography editing.

More precisely, I’ll use the required knowledge of the intended Ansel user as a curriculum :

From Ansel's docs

Ansel expects its users to have

• an intermediate to advanced knowledge of color theory (brightness vs. lightness vs. luminance, chroma vs. saturation, additive models, delta E, etc.), 11.

  See Chris Brejon’s website  for the scope of this knowledge, ↩︎

• an intermediate to advanced knowledge of cameras (ISO, dynamic range, exposure bias, etc.),22.

  See DxO Mark website  for the scope of this knowledge, ↩︎

So, this list :

Color management

cf Color management

• Brightness vs. Lightness vs. Luminance
• Chroma vs. Saturation
• Additive models
• Delta E
• The CIE Chromaticity Diagrams from 1931 and 1976
• Chromaticity vs Color
• RGB Color space and its components
  • Primaries
  • Whitepoint
  • Transfer functions (OETF and EOTF)
• Industry Standards
  • Rendering and Display spaces
  • sRGB
• Scene-Linear workflow
  • Display EOTF: is it “up” or “down” ?
  • Display Linear
  • Example of scene-linear rendering space
  • Scene-linear vs Display-linear
• Tone mapping
  • Filmic look
  • Lookup table (LUT)
  • OCIO (OpenColorIO)

Color theory

• Color Model and Wheel
• Kelvin Temperature Chart
  • Planckian locus VS Daylight locus
  • Kelvin comparison
• Color Schemes and Harmonies
• Color Psychology
• Color and lights
• Concept and Color Keys
  • Color and medium
  • The 2D legacy
  • Lego Batman experience
    • Artist or Technician ?
• The mental image

Cameras

• ISO
• Dynamic range
• Exposure bias
• Signal to noise ratio
• Tonal Range
• Color Sensitivity
• Color Response

(Re)Sources

• The web-book written by Chris Brejon
• The Ansel docs
• Lots of Wikipedia
• Khan academy course about color theory
• DxOmark camera reviews

Footnotes

1. Like this ↩