Thread by @HeilmannTill

Here’s an interesting problem regarding the #aesthetics in reproduction of #digital #image|s. (Interesting to me, at least, and also, maybe, to people like @_menkman, @jbirken, @Sierra_Offline, @kevindriscoll and @GIFmodel). 1/38

What I’ll say is true for all digital images, in a way. (And more generally, for all works of art.) But I want to focus on one type of images and on one set of aesthetic qualities in particular here. 2/38

The problem that’s bothering me is this: What is the proper way to show an early digital #screen image in #print? (Reproduced as a figure in an academic monograph, for example.) 3/38

By ‘early digital screen image’ I mean a #bitmap or #raster #graphic of low #resolution from the 70s, 80s or 90s, typically shown on a #TV set or a computer #monitor at the time. 4/38

To illustrate, here is one such image, a #screenshot from @jmechner’s #PrinceOfPersia for the #AppleII from 1989. I think it’s safe to say that this image was captured with an #emulation years after the #game was released. (Source: mobygames.com/game/apple2/pr…) 5/38

It’s a great piece of computer graphics. I like the visual style, the use of the limited #color palette, the #dithering, the combination of #isometric and ‘flat’ elements, the partially illuminated brick wall etc. 6/38

Although it’s only a screenshot from an emulation, things like the size in #pixel|s, the color palette and aspect ratio tell us a lot about this early digital screen image. 7/38

For example, the image is ‘only’ 280 by 192 pixels, in accordance with the resolution of the Apple ][ Hi-Res mode. 8/38

So, the screenshot gives a good impression and is in some ways even a ‘true’ #representation of the image as constructed for/with/by the Apple ][ at the end of the 80s. 9/38

But as most of you already know (and the rest have surely guessed by now), there’s an important catch: This is not what the image looked like when playing the game in 1989 or the following years. 10/38

Apart from to the obvious difference between an animated image as part of game in play and a ‘still’ screenshot, there is the important factor of #display technology. 11/38

Early digital screen images were typically displayed on cathode-ray tubes or CRTs like television sets and computer monitors. (There are notable exceptions but they are, well, exceptions.) 12/38

A CRT from the 70s, 80s and 90s did not display an image or a raster graphic as a perfect rectangle seamlessly composed of geometrically identical small squares in definite gradations of stable colors, i.e. not the way the screenshot above looks on today’s LCD screens. 13/38

A consumer CRT TV rendered the perfect geometry and color of abstract pixels in a bitmap with subtle but significant ‘distortions’. 14/38

Here are four aesthetic effects that a CRT has on images as addressed by the @RetroPieProject for emulating video games from the past. (Source: retropie.org.uk/docs/Shaders-a…) 15/38

First, there are the scan lines (or, to be pedantic, the “blank” lines in between the actual scan lines) a CRT leaves when drawing on the screen: thin dark strips that run horizontally through the displayed image. 16/38

Second, there is the ‘bloom’ or bleeding of lighter colors into neighboring darker ones, softening parts of the image and giving it a ‘softer’ look. 17/38

Third, there are all the distortions of the #analog #signal, the #noise in the #channel, further smoothening the contours and slightly shifting colors, again making the image look fuzzier or softer. 18/38

Fourth, there are geometry issues having to do with how the CRT beam and the curved glass of the screen interact when generating the image. Such issues were carefully corrected by TV sets but could still lead to small distortions at the edges of the screen. 19/38

To be clear: I think @RetroPieProject shaders probably overemphasize the aesthetic effects of CRT technology, especially the scan lines and the “fishbowl” effect of screen curvature (alabastermenagerie.tumblr.com/post/165771606…). Still, a CRT will produce a different look than an LCD. 20/38

Using @Mattias_G|s neat program CRT View (mattiasgustavsson.itch.io/crtview), we can simulate what the image shown in the screenshot from #PrinceOfPersia would have looked like displayed on a TV or monitor back in the day. 21/38

@Mattias_G And for direct comparison, here’s the screenshot from earlier again. It’s a remarkable difference, I would say. 22/38

It’s important to remember just what we are comparing here: not some ‘faulty copy’ of the original and the ‘real’ thing from 1989 but a screenshot taken from an emulated version of the game and a simulation of a CRT display based on this emulation image. 23/38

Still, if @Mattias_G|s simulation is anything like the picture a CRT would have shown, we can begin to understand how this early digital image may have looked different than the screenshot I found on the Web. 24/38

The simulated CRT display seems to add depth to the image, it appears less jagged, the shapes of the two characters are more lifelike, even the colors are more balanced somehow. 25/38

(Again, screen curvature is probably overdone. But all in all, this looks a lot like I remember it from my own experience playing video games in the 80s and early 90s.) 26/38

Unsurprisingly, display technology plays a big role in how images look. And when we view early digital images on a modern display, what we see may be quite different from what the images looked like when they were first created and experienced. 27/38

Now, I am not claiming that there is a ‘right’ way to display digital images or that every digital image has an original ‘true’ look that must be preserved in reproduction. But from the perspective of #media #history, differences should be acknowledged. 28/38

Let’s get back to my initial question: How to reproduce a digital image from the past that was made for and displayed by a particular screen technology? 29/38

Of course, just as CRT and LCD screens have certain effects on images, so do different printing processes. #Printing a digital image adds another layer of aesthetic #transformation|s. 30/38

Among the more substantive changes: The image must be resized to fit the #page #layout, potentially interpolating/distorting the pixel structure. Pixels are turned into #halftone dots. Colors, if printed, are subtractive instead of additive, translated from #RGB to #CMYK. 31/38

All in all, the printed version of a digital screen image will look very different from the image displayed on a screen. (No big surprise there, really.) 32/38

So, how do we transport the image of an old video game or an early #GIF picture from the screen to the page of a #book? Again, I do not think that there is one right way to do it. But there are decisions to be made. 33/38

Ideally, perhaps, we would take a #photograph of the image displayed on historic screen technology and then reproduce the photograph in print. However, this may be too complicated or costly and not be possible in all cases. 34/38

Should we try to recreate the aesthetics of old screen technologies by other means (using a digital CRT simulator, for example)? When does trying to achieve an ‘original’ or ‘authentic’ look of early digital images become cheap #nostalgia or screen #revisionism? 35/38

Digital images, like all digital data, dissimulate the physicality of their existence (through what @mkirschenbaum has called ‘formal materiality’). This includes display technology and its aesthetic effects. How do we address this issue? 36/38

Summing it up: To the complete shock of absolutely no one in #MediaStudies, #FilmStudies, #ArtHistory and other fields, it is impossible to reproduce an image from one medium in another medium without altering its aesthetics (sometimes substantially so). 37/38

Maybe I am overthinking this. But I am curious to hear what others have to say about it. 38/38

Thread continues here:

https://twitter.com/HeilmannTill/status/1536291558911262721?s=20&t=DWZJObl41sjBB3Eta7Fbag

Thread continues here:

https://twitter.com/HeilmannTill/status/1536292391887458308?s=20&t=edx7fKthkIo4HjjN-E3Atw