Scatterplot of the continuum contrast vs. apparent longitudinal field strength B_app,los for the quiet Sun (upper panel) and plage (bottom panel) fields of view shown in Fig. 1, pores excluded. The contrast reference (indicated by the horizontal dashed red line) is the mean intensity of the pixels where B_app,los < 100 G. Red crosses: average values of the continuum contrast inside B_app,los-bins of 25 G width. The red error bars are the standard deviations inside each bin. Solid red curves are third-order polynomial fits of the average values in the range 200   G < B_app,los < 1000 G. The blue arrows indicate the maxima of the fits, locating the “peak” of the contrast trends. The vertical dashed lines delimit the interval  ± 200 G around the peak.