Thanks Bojan,
Every little bit helps.
What I want to understand is, what is changing as you adjust the curve? The data can only be manipulated certain ways. If the histogram shows the magnitude of photons for each pixel, across a particular range (0-255), what is happening to the data as you move the curve? Are you simply changing the reference points for how any particular program interprets the data, as Col mentions.
Is it as simple as you are removing all the empty points at each end of the 0-255 histogram so that the signal to noise ratio artificially improves?
This is kind of understanding I find myself craving... as I mentioned possibly a little self-destructive in that some may think that it kills all the fun in creating an image.
A somewhat ironic aspect of all this is that I'm not really interested in going down the imaging path. Too expensive and once an image is taken and processed, I'd be done. My interests are more on the observational side and simply capturing moments.
"crazy it is... young padiwan... "