Digital photography: Learning the Histogram

I'm browsing all the old posts in Derrick Story's new site. This one is excellent: The Digital Story: "Learning the Histogram" - Podcast 13.

The tendency when joining a new blog is to only look at the new stuff. If the volume is not huge, I prefer to find the best of the archives.

This article also told me what "gamma" means. Who would have guessed? Gamma refers to the midpoint of a tonal range.

Huh?

What's hard about that?

I wonder if 'monitor gamma' refers to how a particular display deals with middle tonal ranges. Mac vs. Windows gamma is a big and insoluble problem in digital imaging -- I don't think color profiles adjust for differential gamma management (I could be wrong). I set my Mac displays to mid-way between Mac and Windows gamma -- it muddies the UI but my images are more viewable on Windows.