Hi!
It's beautiful, Boris.
Thanks.
I opened it on the black background as you suggested and it looks very
nice, I love the quality of the light. I then became curious and took a
copy, removed all the bordering black, and put it on a white
background. To make the relative contrasts and tonalities look the same
to my eye with a white matte border, I had to add a Curves adjustment
that expanded and raised the the grayscale values in the darker
tonalities while compressing the brighter tonalities a little bit. A
gentle curve in Photoshop's Curves tool accomplished this ... the
histograms are different, but to the eye the result looks virtually
identical in the image itself.
This points out the importance of balancing photos for the environment
they are to be displayed in very clearly, I think. I cobbled up this
composite as an example to show the effect of matte color and the
adjustment/histograms:
http://homepage.mac.com/godders/BL-tower-backgrounds.jpg
Great many thanks. In fact, it is customary on both PhotoForum and
PhotoSight sites to click on the picture. On PhotoSight they even give
you clickable scale of greys from white to black so that you can choose
the best background for your pleasure.
If you wish, I can easily provide you with original RAW file or
converted color JPG. However, it was shot in the Tower of London which
had me feeling rather gloomy. Hence I deliberately closed the shadows
some and even made highlights slightly darker... I had enough slack with
purely white windows and very dark, probably black, lectern. So I could
play within those limits all I wanted...
What's interesting though is your treatment that preserves the effect
while keeping the background white...
I shall take that as a lesson and think this through. This is very
interesting.
Thanks again!
Boris
