> Austin wrote: > > That's the point, it isn't an argument! It's like asking > > why the number 9 is larger than the number 4. It's just > > the way it is. It's just a fact of simple physics that a > > pixel does not contain near the same amount of information > > as a dye cloud. > > I suspected I should have chosen a word other than "argument". The number > 9 is larger than the number 4 because it is a convention that 9 > is 5 integer > values larger than 4. Other than that, the digit 9 or the word "nine" are > simply labels to represent an idea. Saying "it is because it is" does not > constitute any sort of meaningful explanation.
Some things just are, and the truth is manifested in and of it self. A basket that has 25 eggs in it has MORE eggs than a basket with 4, right? All semantics aside. Here is (one of) your original question(s)/statement(s), which I have been answering: "> > > I don't see why stochastic or random dye clouds inherently > provides more > > > information than a pixel." The point of contention appears to be "more information". I believe we agree on what "more" and "information" mean. Pixels ONLY represent the tonal value of the area which the sensor sees, which does NOT represent the physical characteristics of the dye cloud, unless the dye cloud is perfectly square and happens to line up perfectly in the field of view of that one pixel. In fact a pixel MAY represent many dye clouds, or only a portion of a single dye cloud, but there is NO way you can represent the amount of information in a single dye cloud by a single pixel, when A pixel ONLY contains tonal information. Dye clouds are irregular in shape, and dye clouds do NOT line up 1:1 with pixels. Even if you did characterize each and every dye cloud digitally, you would need more than spot tonal information, You would also have to use many pixels, or characterize the shape, because it's irregular. Characterizing the shape will be very consuming (as in a lot of data) to represent. Given all that, I believe it is obvious why a dye cloud "provides inherently more information than a pixel". If you don't see that, I can't explain it any further without sitting down at a white board and drawing it out step by step... > Claiming that a pixel has anything to do with physics is an odd thing to > do. Now that's an odd thing to do...claim a pixel has nothing to do with physics... I don't know about your scanner, but mine is not Gnostic. > A pixel is a number or a set of numbers that represent a mixture and > intensity of light. It's not limited by physics. A pixel has an analog to digital origin in our case. This analog to digital conversion has limitations, which ARE limitations of physics. That's just a fact. If you created a drawing with Adobe Illustrator, then your pixels would not have an analog origin. > A dye cloud > has a certain > dimension and a certain behviour with light. A pixel is not limited in > the same way. Er, a pixel is FAR more limited, since it is only representing a single characteristic of a regular patterned point source (as in a single element in a regular grid pattern of equal sized elements). > A pixel could represent an area the size of an atom, or the > size of a galaxy; *any* dimension Except for the fact that we are talking about film scanners, and the are a pixel can represent is limited by physics... > and it may be an 8 bit number > or you could > pick any number of bits. Yes, and it ONLY represents tonality, NO other characteristic at all is represented by a pixel. > How small would you like to make the > area represented > by the pixel and how many bits of RGB would you like to use until > you exceed > the data contained in a chemical representation of an image? Then you said "it's just a matter of increasing the resolution of the grid..." Which is where the physical characteristics come in play. There are physical limitations as to how many pixels you can "practically" use in a scanning system. You can't just make a sensor of infinite density (or infinite size and use optics), since these bring up physical limitations. These are just facts of physics, and why physics is involved. > I'm > astonished > that you could believe the "fact" you have stated above. Because what I have stated ARE facts. It would take MANY MANY pixels to represent the physical characteristics of a single dye cloud, and one could argue for quite some time what is the "correct" number of pixels to do this...and NO, because of physical limitations on sensor element sizes (that are NOT the same as faster processors, larger memory etc...those aren't analog sensors, so advances in those areas are not entirely applicable to advances in digital imaging sensors in this case) you can not just "increase the resolution of the grid".
