Tonemapping is an essential component of modern video editing and rendering, and for that matter it has been common in photo editing (through the processes of "

Tonemapping is an essential component of modern video editing and rendering, and for that matter it has been common in photo editing (through the processes of "dodging" and "burning" the film as it was being exposed) since at least the '40s. Tonemapping is what actually lets you see the depths of light and dark in the same scene without the darkest and brightest parts of the image being completely blown out to black/white. Our pupils control global contrast (average brightness for the entire image) and our retinas can account for some degree of local contrast, so not applying the tonemapping and having i.e. the view from a window appear blindingly white makes things look more unrealistic. (start at page 53) http://www.slideshare.net/naughty_dog/lighting-shading-by-john-hable http://www.slideshare.net/naughty_dog/lighting-shading-by-jo... http://mynameismjp.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/a-closer-look-at-tone-mapping/ http://mynameismjp.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/a-closer-look-at... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansel_Adams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansel_Adams The Disney Research team purposefully exaggerated their tonemapping far beyond what was aesthetically pleasing in order to clearly demonstrate the artifacts of other tonemapping techniques that their novel approach avoided. In an actual film, the editors would use much more subtle parameters.