Thanks for your remarks, Tom!
If you take the time to actually measure the transfer function of a modern digital camera in sRGB mode, you will find that the working gamma is about 1.1-1.4 X higher than the sRGB encoding gamma.
Which means that unsurprisingly, camera vendors build in some kind of input color appearance adjustment / scene reference → output reference conversion for an assumed typical situation, which surely makes sense because once the image is on the computer and is checked and edited (or consciously left unchanged), it is already output referred to typical computer viewing conditions. Which means that no additional color appearance adjustment is required on the output side as long as the images are not viewed in an environment that is untypically dim for a computer (i.e. << 500 lx). Which means you can simply use your ICC monitor profile as is, without any additional color appearance adjustment.
The point is this: within the sRGB world, working gamma is not necessarily equal to the encoding gamma
Which is to be expected as a “poor man’s input color appearance correction / scene reference → output reference conversion”. So “sRGB camera” means “built for sRGB” more than “built with sRGB”.
and the working gamma at different points in the process is not constant.
This I find surprising. I’m not aware of any working gamma change while you stay in the sRGB realm. Or are you referring to default printer drivers, i.e. to print output only? One final comment: A lot of the work in the field of color appearance models has been funded by companies who have a genuine interest in selling equipment. You can observe in any electronics store that “contrast sells”, i.e. if one of two otherwise identical TV sets or digital cameras produces an image with a higher contrast (within reasonable limits), the average consumer will prefer it. I’ve always felt that quite a few color appearance models tend to exaggerate the required contrast enhancements, so that they are a great alibi for camera and display vendors to sport too high a contrast by default. The “typical sRGB camera” is a good example for that. And then people who’ve grown up in our media conditioned world are surprised that the reality “isn’t as colorful as it’s supposed to be” ... Bye Uli _________________________________________________________________________ Uli Zappe, Christian-Morgenstern-Straße 16, D-65201 Wiesbaden, Germany http://www.ritual.org Fon: +49-700-ULIZAPPE Fax: +49-700-ZAPPEFAX _________________________________________________________________________