Much of the so called “evidence’ that the moon landings were faked is based on supposed inconsistencies in the shadows present in the photos.

In that case, there is actually an added element (in addition to the fact that humans are not good judges of this stuff) that people sold on the idea of conspiracy ignore (or perhaps are not even aware of): quite significant image distortions by wide angle camera lenses. These are not small distortions, by any means and have to be taken into account when considering (apparent) directions of shadows with respect to a light source.

The funniest and most ironic thing about this is that people actually think the correct shadows are wrong in the case of the Oswald photo.

of course, they have a motive for doing so which may be coloring their judgment, so to speak, but the scientist who did the analysis also said the nose shadow threw him.

So perhaps the lesson here is “get the main shadows right, but don’t worry about the minor ones too much” because even if they are correct, people may think they are wrong and in that case, better not to have them there at all.

I think it would be interesting to analyze old paintings from the standpoint of shadows to see how many of the old masters actually got the shadows correct and also maybe to see if there are “shadow fingerprints” that might allow you to identify the artists based purely on their shadow technique.

and by the way, man, you have a good memory. Your workshop is like a dream to me now.

What was it, ‘62? (or ‘63)

So, sorry, but you’re not off the hook with respect to good, correct shadows and reflections. In fact, IIRC we discussed this in one of your critique pieces …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4gw_3nA5G4&feature=player_embedded

The interesting thing from the artistic standpoint is what the scientist (an image expert) says about humans being very bad at judging shadows.

some of us obsess about getting things accurate in our paintings (I know I worry about details like shadows and reflections), but if what he says is true (and there is no reason to doubt it), it does not make all that much difference with regard to “believability” of a painting.

That is actually surprising to me (though i have looked into this stuff enough to know that working out the actual geometries of reflections and shadows can be extremely complicated)

So, now i know that I can just throw in any old shadows and reflections and no one will be the wiser.

Can your dog do this?

Susan and all - eArtist3 is available for Mac too.

Marti, I photograph all my paintings myself (except for the super duper high res - the 100+ MB files I need for full size prints, which I go to a professional to do). Believe me, it’s incredibly handy to be able to photograph a piece and run it through Photoshop and send an image off to a gallery (or post to my blog here, or to Facebook, or to my website, or a magazine, or…the list goes on). I can’t imagine not having that speed and control myself. But then, I’m pretty type A (= anal retentive control freak, IOTW).

I need so many variations of sizes and resolutions on any given image that PS or PS Elements is a must.

But when I switched to a Mac it became academic since, at least two years ago, they didn’t have a Mac version. Flick! has a really clean professional interface and costs all of…..$29.95 (they’re Australian not Kiwi, oops)

http://www.arawak.com.au/flick.html

If I ever move west (someday hopefully), I will have to switch to Verizon. Sprint does not seem to work anywhere out there - was in Colorado and the only people able to use their cell were those with Verizon.

As for the photo conversion, my photographer saves my images in 3 formats - rgb, cmyk and raw so I have what I need. If I take a photo myself, I send it to my son who has all the “toys” and knows how to do what I need done. (He’s the art director for an outdoor magazine publisher.)