Increased Contrast, Decreased Gamma = More FPS?
Posted: 2014-01-22 18:05
Last night, out of curiosity, I decided to boost my display's contrast level to 105, drop the gamma level down to .95, and drop the brightness down to -1. All of this was done in ATI's Catalyst Control Center. This color curve is exactly what is seen in Photoshop or Lightroom.
The reasoning behind doing this was to brighten my whites and highlights, darken my blacks and shadows, all while still having accurate greys. I figured that since many photographers do exactly this in Photoshop or in camera during post-processing, that the benefits would apply directly to PR and any other video game. Now, while this does make a photo's color "pop" a bit more, the trade off is that you lose detail in your light and dark areas as the non BW colors become less flat. Too much of this will cause "clipping" in the color, where you basically destroy color information, resulting in pure whites and pure blacks, which for the most part do not exist in real life. Never the less, many photographers do this on purpose, and most non-photographers probably don't even consider this.
When I played PR last night, I was seeing a 10-15 FPS boost, in Fallujah with 90+ players. Now this could just be incidental, or there could be a real benefit here as a result of having less of a color spectrum to display. I have not played this game long, but I have not seen any pure blacks on any texture in game, nor have I seen any pure whites in the game, with maybe the exception of the sun, but do you really look at that while playing?
So, from a photography perspective, if PR were a photo, it could do with some post-processing.
I will experiment with this some more to be sure.
In the meantime, what is everyone's opinion on this?
The reasoning behind doing this was to brighten my whites and highlights, darken my blacks and shadows, all while still having accurate greys. I figured that since many photographers do exactly this in Photoshop or in camera during post-processing, that the benefits would apply directly to PR and any other video game. Now, while this does make a photo's color "pop" a bit more, the trade off is that you lose detail in your light and dark areas as the non BW colors become less flat. Too much of this will cause "clipping" in the color, where you basically destroy color information, resulting in pure whites and pure blacks, which for the most part do not exist in real life. Never the less, many photographers do this on purpose, and most non-photographers probably don't even consider this.
When I played PR last night, I was seeing a 10-15 FPS boost, in Fallujah with 90+ players. Now this could just be incidental, or there could be a real benefit here as a result of having less of a color spectrum to display. I have not played this game long, but I have not seen any pure blacks on any texture in game, nor have I seen any pure whites in the game, with maybe the exception of the sun, but do you really look at that while playing?
So, from a photography perspective, if PR were a photo, it could do with some post-processing.
I will experiment with this some more to be sure.
In the meantime, what is everyone's opinion on this?