hi
someone correctly pointed out that i have a dodgy shadow in my short bus chop



i was aware of this when i did it, but wasn't sure how to go about fixing it. in the end i just blurred it a bit

can anyone advise me what happens to a hard shadow when something else casts a softer shadow over it? (i just experimented with the shadow of my finger on my desk and when i held paper over it, the dark shadow looked like it went lighter. optical illusion or not? )

surely the shadow under the foreground bus should be at least as dark as that under the other buses?

cheers
dumbat

with the roof shadow OVER the busues--the dark bus section under it would not be there- leave the roof shadow area at that shade 'including' where the now clipped buses shadow would be.
that lil' triangle of bus shadow would just not be there anymore.
oops--sorry--in fact the roof wopuld cast a shadow onr the botton back corner of bus at the bumper.

Just a quick work up..
somethin' like this.

the shadow angles will still be off-unless ya run that back of bus one all the way up and pretend the building's several stories tall.
*edit* PS..it is very cool to use forums this way..G'd job and Welcome to PSC.

thanks for the advice and the friendly welcome

still not sure about that shadow. the shadows under the bus are darker than the shadows under the building because the bus is lower to the ground and lets in less ambient light. by putting the back end of the bus under the shadow of the building, there should be even less ambient light reaching under the bus, and so if anything i'd expect the shadow to be even darker when the bus is in the shade of the building

darker but maybe more dispersed?

as it's a nice sunny day i will be checking out lots of shadows when i go to lunch, see if i can see what happens

i thought i could get away without shading the bus itself as maybe it was just the back of the mudflap that was in shade

That doesn't look right to me. I think the first picture was closer to being correct. One shadow can't make another area of ground lighter. It just wouldn't make sense.

When two shadows meet, they multiply (like the PS layer mode, not the mathematics).

it's very ambiguos , depends totally on the ambient light.
For sake of argument they are both wrong...likely there would be reflected light causing a darker shadow area..not likely a strong edged one.

see...noone knows

i had a look at real shadows at lunchtime. i think my first effort was ok but the double-shadow area needs to be much much more dispersed/softer-edged

i was wondering if the original image itself was distorted in some way, exaggerating the high contrast between the areas in direct sunlight and the shadows under the bus, and making these shadows darker than they actually were

next time, i'll park my extra buses in full sunlight