What we see is not a simple consequence of the light sent to our eyes. Vision has two powerful spatial transformations of scene luminances: one optical; the other neural. The first spatial redistribution of light is intraocular scatter. Scattered light reduces the dynamic range of the retinal image compared to light from the scene. The second spatial transformation comes from neural processing that causes appearances to vary with the scene’s content. A beach scene, (mostly max-luminance scene elements, and maximal scattered light) has the highest slope neural response function. The post-quanta-catch neural mechanisms overcompensate for the intraocular scatter. Low-reflectance objects look darker in scenes with maximal scatter