their various brightness attributes. These signs then travel through the channel, and on the receiving end they are again assigned the corresponding dots, which allows recombination of the image. In their technical arrangement, screening and image-telegraphic scanning anticipate the modern scanning process: however they differ on an essential point: During the modern scanning process, values are stored and can be further processed. By scanning them, analog photos are carried over into the computer and thus made accessible to mathematical operations: The condition for image processing was created. Electronic image recording was not made possible for another 20 years: through the CCD (charged coupled device) chip, which was patented in 1974 and consists of a lattice-like arrangement of light-sensitive elements via which light can be converted into an electrical charge. This, on the other hand, can be measured and subsequently digitalized, i.e. converted into bit patterns. [40] Although photographs are in this way made directly (without going through a scanner) available to processing or transmission by the computer, their creation remains bound to the analog transfer of light

quantities: The actual digitalization occurs only through the measuring out of these light values and their code conversion into numerical values (bits). This distinguishes analogo-numerical photography (mentioned above) from images that have completely generated by a computer and whose ‹look› is only adapted to photographic (or cinematic) aesthetics. [41]

In view of the use of the photograph by the mass media, the advantages of its digitalization are perfectly apparent: It can be delivered immediately (e.g. as a press photo) and made available for prompt processing (e.g. for the layout of a magazine); in addition, it can be directly distributed throughout the world via the Internet.

Digital Montage

Apart from their use in military and scientific contexts, [42] the possibilities of digital image processing and analog-digital image recording (beginning with the so-called ‹video still camera› introduced in 1981) were first used in the areas of magazines and the press. Until way into the 1980s, digital image processing remained a high-tech option only large agencies could afford—the