Subject: Re: Why do their heads look too narrow, or wide   
   From: Wolf K    
       
   On 2017-01-01 23:08, micky wrote:   
   [snip details of graphics errors]   
   > What's going on?   
   [...]   
       
   What's going on is that the idjit at the card company hasn't left enough    
   space for a square photo. They either "made the picture fit" by hand, or    
   else have set the template to squeeze the image into the allotted space.    
   It's quite likely that they don't notice the distortion. See Footnote below.   
       
   Other common mistakes:   
   a) reducing the picture size before inserting it into the doc. Result is    
   a low-res pixellated image.   
   b) printed pictures are too dark. Printing is generally darker than the    
   display. Easy fix: change the gamma.   
   c) printed pictures are muddy. Printing is always lower contrast than    
   display. Easy fix: increase gamma and contrast.   
   d) captions in pictures instead of on separate line(s). There are so    
   many ways to f**k this up, I won't go into details.   
       
   Footnote: My observations suggest that some people are "distortion    
   blind". They cannot or do not see the actual shape of the image nor the    
   distortions when the aspect ratio is wrong, etc.   
       
   Data point 1: One of may students back in the 60s was a movie junkie.    
   Our local theatre had two, sometimes three, programs a week; he went to    
   see almost all of them. In class, discussing the visual effects of    
   movies, I casually mentioned that some movies were widescreen    
   (CinemaScope, etc). He looked puzzled, and after some discussion it    
   appeared that he had never noticed that some movies filled the theatre's    
   screen edge to edge, and other used only the middle two-thirds or so.   
       
   Data point 2: TVs in restaurants, bars, and hotels are frequently set to    
   stretch the image to fill the screen, so that the images are distorted.    
   It looks funny to see squat football players that morph into skinny    
   giants when they fall. But oddly enough, very few people seem to notice.    
   Or if they do, it doesn't bother them. It bothers me. A lot.   
       
   Have a good day.   
       
   --    
   Best,   
   Wolf K   
   https://kirkwood40.blogspot.com   
   It's called "opinion" because it's not knowledge.   
      
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