ABSTRACT
All of the techniques for noise reduction, adjustment of tonal range (grey scale brightness and contrast) or color balance, etc., discussed in Chapter 2 can be considered as enhancement of the original image in that they improve the ability of the human vision system to view the image and extract important information from it. But, because these are, for the most part, operations that were routinely accomplished by accepted darkroom techniques before digital imaging and computers became available, they are not usually considered controversial. The more aggressive methods of image enhancement surveyed in this chapter may raise some issues of acceptability because they are not so easily accomplished without the computer (although in principle many of them can be performed using darkroom equipment and film).
