The question of how image information is perceived and processed has, of course, not only become relevant in the digital age. However, we now have to contend with a visual “information overload” that did not exist in this intensity before. For a message to reach the recipient at all, it usually first has to assert itself against competing image information. In other words, without a certain degree of conspicuousness, it is almost impossible for an advertising image to be noticed at all.
This raises the question of whether the human ability to perceive the environment in an orderly fashion is innate or whether it must first be learned. In any case, it is assumed that in the perception of an image not only the impressions from outside are relevant, but that the brain complements the sensory impressions by applying its own principles of order and thus a final inner image is generated.
At the same time, it is the case that only a small part of the information received via the visual field ever appears in consciousness. This also applies to the other senses. There are always filters upstream, which are supposed to extract exactly the information that we either consider relevant through experience (learning) or whose relevance has been programmed into us by evolutionary biology. Even if it is a truism: Depending on interest, activity, attention or mood, the same environment is perceived quite differently by the same person.