Data values captured by a modern camera far exceed the ranges that can be reproduced by output media such as paper or screens—meaning that the only way[0] to obtain an image we can communicate to someone else (or future ourselves) as a static artifact[0] is by throwing out data and conforming values to ranges that fit in the output color space, converting scene-referred (“raw”) data to output-referred.

This is where subjective perception comes in: how we perceive colors and shapes in a given scene depends a lot on what we had seen prior to this scene, our general mood, and various other aspects of our mind state. It’s only by taking control of processing scene-referred data that we can use the full range of captured values to try to convey most convincingly, within the constraints of the output space, our subjective perception of the scene around the time we pressed the shutter trigger.

(Naturally, further down this rabbit hole come the questions about e.g. what our conscious perception—but not the camera—was blind to in the scene, and eventually about the nature of reality itself, at which point one may feel compelled to give up and go into painting instead.)

[0] This would be quite niche, but I wonder if we could develop tools for exploring raw data at viewing stage, allowing the audience to effortlessly adjust their perception of the scene (even if within ranges specified by the photographer). Such exploration would require significant computing powers, but we’ll probably be there in a couple of years.