The Subtleties of Light

- a little philosophy - a little tutorial - scroll down for the finished product -
click those photos to see the details

I have been experimenting with shadows now that my new graphics card gives me the option of using them. Well, actually, I have SOME options for using them. My system -- better graphics card or no -- cannot deal with the Viewer 2 specs well. And for me, the colors are supersaturated and the interface blurry -- even when using Strawberry's lovely Windlight shadow setting and after lots of experimenting with the depth of field. I "can" get a fairly good shot, but not nearly as clear as with the older viewer style.

Since I see a lot of shadow photos with supersaturated color and blurry focus, I am guessing it has to do with the graphics card used. I might be improve my experience by changing the Nvidia settings, but since my computer doesn't LIKE Viewer 2 and its bettered clones, there is little reason to spend the time. And that brings me to my experiment and post of the day -- Imprudence shadows.

Yes, shadows do work in the  Imprudence Viewer. They are "unstable". So says the warning on the Advanced tab under Edit - Preferences. What exactly does "unstable" mean? Well it can mean that you crash. It can mean that anything at all with alpha (like tree leaves) is outlined in tiny white dotted lines. It can undoubtedly  mean things I haven't discovered yet. But today as I was taking some photos inside my new house (yep, moved again - more on that in an upcoming post) I thought, "why not see how shadows work in here?" Happily they appeared.

The definition of "unstable" today included a couple of crashes as well as the inability to capture the shadows using Snapshot. I could get a perfectly nice picture, just sans shadows. So, all these photos even the one above without shadows are screen captures, not viewer snapshot. I thought it only fair to keep things as scientific as possible. All photos are unretouched for light enhancement and the like.

My top photo uses both shadows and a facelight. The second photo is the same Windlight setting, but with no facelight. The third photo is a shot using just Windlight, no shadow setting. The top photo certainly gives a realistic look to the scene. I even found one light setting that had the shadows of the fan moving across the bed. THAT was interesting!  Much of the clothing detail is lost in the shadow shots however. I see this often on the feeds.  Photo three (no shadows) shows a good bit of detail in the clothing, but the bed linens have lost all their texture. Can we simply not win?

Actually we can win.  Photo four is a composite of the same shot and Windlight setting  -- with and without shadows. I cut out the no shadow version of myself and pasted onto the shadow photo. I did a little blurry edge along one leg (it was a very speedy cutout) and  then added my very lowest setting of diffuse glow. That was it. Now you have shadows AND clothing textures. I could have lightened it a bit more, but I wanted a late afternoon feel.

This is a lot more work than I want to go to on a daily basis, but some of you may love playing around. If so, give it a try and see what you can come up with. Meanwhile, you will probably only be seeing shadows now and then in my posts, or perhaps in the top photo. Who know?

Newness in my outfit includes some gift pants from Prim and Pixel Paradise. They are one of several garments in a complete outfit, A Berry Paisley Holiday. Unfortunately I couldn't find the details on the how and where of the present, but if you stop over start at the holiday village above. It is extremely cute. You can even skate with polar bears.  My sweater is another color of the new  Cold Kiss sweater from PARADISIS. While I have plenty of lovely sweaters, these are special in that they are so lightweight and finely knit. The collar is nicely shaped also. A second collar attachment point would be nice for those of us that can't do multiple attachments yet. Always wanting more *wink*. Since the jeans are a lower cut than I am comfortable with, I added the black opaque panty hose that came with the Cold Kiss shorts. I mean really,  it is SNOWING out there!

Click on any photo for a high rez version. You may need to enlarge further with the zoom tool.

Style Notes: 

Hair: !!Calico Ingmann Creations!! Tracy  Copper
Skin: []::Tuli::[] The Dressing Room :: Gina 04
Clothing: PARADISIS Cold Kiss : Sweater purple; PARADISIS Cold Kiss : Cut panty hose black; PPP A Berry Paisley Holiday Jeans; -Phoenix Rising-Poofy Vest-Black (NLA)
Shoes: MK Fashion : Zbooties Black Ankle Boots V1
Accessories:

Poses by:LAP