...or maybe "Curmudgeons on Mars?" Regardless of title, this is for my good cyber-buddy Duayne, who like me, has a passion for Mars. It's a great place to retire to; especially, if you like light gravity, lots of rocks and dust, and are happiest if your nearest neighbor is 1506 kloms (kilometers) to the northeast and your second closest neighbor is 5,021 kloms, hate trimming trees and cutting grass. So here you are, ol' Buddy! I finally got you to Mars. I'm not totally happy with this image, for all the work (most in PSP4) that went into it. It seems to come out either washed out or too dark, despite some tweating with the brightness/contrast. First thing I had to do was take a black and white picture taken by Spirit and colorize it to something like Mars color. That came out perfect, although you wouldn't know it here. Then I had to take the power plant, life support storage unit, and house (all by Ed Baumgarten) and my Mars Mule and render them as a 3d image in the same lighting, change the image to 2D and make that an alpha image. I cut out the nearest slope and made that a separate picture, then pasted the buildings onto the original Spirt photo, and then added the slope to the picture. I then put this image onto Infinity Cove and added the Marsuit (by Lynn Jonathan) with my texture and a cutout of Dwayne's head from another photo to scale down and position inside the helmet. Originally, the Martian colonist was supposed to be smaller and shown in his entirety walking on the ground, but I could never get his shadow to cooperate. I've fiddled with it off and on for several months, trying all kinds of light arrangements and positionings to no avail. The background was either too dark or too light, and in neither case would the marssuit shadow match the shadows of the buildings and rocks. Hence, this compromise, which I don't particularly like. Sometimes, one has to settle for optimum, rather than perfection if a picture is ever to be done. Sigh! Thanks for looking and for any helpful or encouraging remarks! Regards, Jeremy