3 ms·
Hey off-topic maybe but why do photos from space always look so fake?
by what-no-tests 3y ago
Hey off-topic maybe but why do photos from space always look so fake?
- dfxm12 3y agoI'm not sure exactly what you're referring to, but, mostly, photos from space are taken differently from photos we're used to taking, like with our cell phones. For example, the Webb Telescope works partly on the spectrum outside of light visible to us, so color has to be added to represent these parts. Other times, we might be seeing a composite image with overlapping parts.
- thomastjeffery 3y agoObjects in space are illuminated by a single light source, and are not surrounded by atmosphere. This is similar to the most fundamentally basic raytraced scenes. To contrast, objects on Earth are often illuminated by many light sources, by the light reflected off of other nearby objects, and even by the light reflected/refracted through the atmosphere the surrounds them. This is very challenging to reproduce in a raytraced scene; so what we are used to is something on the spectrum between realistic and oversimplified. An oversimplified render of a scene on Earth will have sharp shadows and lack the color reflected off of surrounding objects.
- what-no-tests 3y agoInteresting - I hadn't considered the single-point-illumination aspect.
- thomastjeffery 3y agoIt also goes both ways: one reason we can have certainty that the Apollo moon landings were real is that the photographs have sharp parallel shadows that could not have been faked using contemporary methods.