What does tonemapping really do?
Tonemapping is really about compressing a 32-bit file down to a believable, generally realistic 8-bit image. With traditional 8-bit photography, often times highlights will be blown out and subtle shadow information will just go black with very few details in the shadow areas. Tonemapping allows you to basically pick and choose which highlights, midtones, and shadows that you want to use. You take those preferred areas and compress it down into an 8-bit file (it could be compressed to 16-bits also) into an image that looks “real” to the viewer, but with traditional digital photography, it wouldn’t be possible. The human eye adjusts exposure on the fly in our brains and old traditional painters also painted in scenes and exposures the way they “see” them in real life as well. Tonemapping allows us to more accurately reproduce how our brain views a scene. Again, let me clarify that tonemapping is very subjective. Many artists/photographers create very stylized and hyper-real images that
