Useful Noise
High levels of noise are almost always undesirable, but there are cases when a certain amount of noise is useful, for example to prevent discretization artifacts (color banding or posterization). Some noise also increases acutance (apparent sharpness). Noise purposely added for such purposes is called dither; it improves the image perceptually, though it degrades the signal-to-noise ratio.
Read more about this topic: Image Noise
Famous quotes containing the word noise:
“Places where he might live and die and never hear of the United States, which make such a noise in the world,never hear of America, so called from the name of a European gentleman.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a cat doesbut you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights, and youll hear grammar that will give you the lockjaw. Ignorant people think its the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it aint so; its the sickening grammar they use.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910)