The black and white points refer to the absolute number of pixels. In the following example a coloured image is first desaturated (turned into a grey scale image) and then the darkest 90% of pixels are turned black, the brightest 5% are made white, and those between 90% and 95% are grey-scaled:

<?php
$im = new Imagick ("some_image.jpg");
list ($width, $height) = array_values ($im->getImageGeometry ());
$im->modulateImage (100, 0, 100);
$im->contrastStretchImage ($width * $height * 0.90, $width * $height * 0.95);
$im->writeImage ("temp.jpg");
echo "<img src=\"temp.jpg\">";
?>

Trying to figure out what values the black and white points can have and what their effects are nearly drove me around the bend. However, this works:

<?php
$width = 480;
$height = 360;
$mask = new Imagick ();
$mask->newImage ($width, $height, "black");
$draw = new ImagickDraw ();
$draw->setFillColor ("white");
$draw->ellipse ($width / 2, $height / 2, $width * 5 / 12, $height * 5 / 12, 0, 360);
$mask->drawImage ($draw);
$mask->blurImage (0, 50);
$mask->contrastStretchImage (10, 125000);
$mask->writeImage ("mask.png");
?>

The result will be a vignette mask with the pixels in the corner being pure black, and the ones in the middle pure white (which is not the case if the line is commented out). Reducing the white value to, say, 100, turns most of the grey pixels white.