World Wide Gamma: Data & Technical Report

A while back, the World Wide Gamma tool was posted to the blog. This is an attempt to estimate an overall display Optical-Electronic Conversion Function or 'gamma' using a method of adjustment experiment. The results have been accepted for publication and presentation at the 18th IS&T/SID Color Imaging Conference. The corresponding technical report has been completed. In addition this post includes the raw observer data so that, if you are so motivated, you can try your own fit to the data.

The technical report is available here.

The raw data used in the report is available here. There were multiple requests for the data when the experiment was first posted so it has been posted here for general usage.

The result is about 2.36, which is quite close to the sRGB specification.

In some ways the result is perhaps not that unexpected. One of the anonymous manuscript reviewers pointed out that we have "just confirmed what we already know which is that most display manufacturers design their devices to have an sRGB gamma to fit into pre-existing workflows." Fair enough. But hopefully a rigorous and systematic confirmation of this common knowledge is useful nonetheless. Likewise it would also appear that most display users are presumably using some sort of sRGB workflow, at least when they surf the web.