Image Quality and Black & White Photographs

Abstract

The eight films investigated are of two populations with respect to noise and perceptions of image quality. Results from observations of image quality indicate that for images of relatively low noise, sharpness is the prime parameter in judgements of quality. For images of relatively high noise, noise (graininess) is a prime parameter in judgements of image quality. The functional relationship between image quality and the covariants of sharpness and graininess which was devized for colour prints has been shown to be valid when applied to black-and-white prints. Neither of the metrics investigated gave good correlations with perceived quality over the complete range of images under ther conditions used