A positive image is a normal image. A negative image is a total inversion of a positive image, in which light areas appear dark and vice versa. A negative color image is additionally color reversed, with red areas appearing cyan, greens appearing magenta and blues appearing yellow. This sometimes can have a reverse effect and cause the greens to appear a reddish brown.
Film negatives usually also have much less contrast than the final images. This is compensated by the higher contrast reproduction by photographic paper or by increasing the contrast when scanning and post processing the scanned images.
Read more about this topic: Negative (photography)
Famous quotes containing the words negative and/or image:
“Our role is to support anything positive in black life and destroy anything negative that touches it. You have no other reason for being. I don’t understand art for art’s sake. Art is the guts of the people.”
—Elma Lewis (b. 1921)
“Two dollars now prognosticate
An image supine and elate
For Jenny sweet will keep the date....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)