Step 1: get yourself a stick of artist’s charcoal, do a quick sketch of the Man on the Shroud.
OK, so it’s a crude cartoon. But this post is about the mechanics of turning an image – any image – into a luminous, haunting end-result …
Next step: reverse light/dark tonal contrast (I used ImageJ software)
Picture 2 was too black/white. So I used photo-editing software to adjust contrast/brightness to get a softer grey image.
Now put the image back into ImageJ software for 3D enhancement.
Ring any bells? Certainly it’s crude, but it shows how a quickie drawn image can produce a ‘ghostly’ end -result.
Before and after. But is the above kind of image manipulation still being employed on a grand scale for mind manipulation? Ah, now there’s a thought to conjure with…
A much better Shroud-like image can be obtained with scorching instead of charcoal sketching, using a hot iron applied free hand ( I raise my hat to pyrographic artiste Irene Corgiat) or, better still, by imprinting off a hot bas-relief template.
Making the “scorch” image from the hot template produces ‘thermographic inversion” (the prominent parts of image like the nose which appear light in a photograph register instead as dark due to better contact with linen). The result is a ‘negative’ image.
Inverting the negative image back to a positive produces a luminous ghostly image, unlike a normal photographic positive? Why? Because the features that were imprinted and thus emphasised in the original imprint end up ‘de-emphasised’, and those that were left un-imaged – as white space – end up emphasised.
Is it any wonder why the iconic Shroud image looks so much better than the original negative imprint? IT IS – because the inversion/reversion cycle produces a unique ghostly effect that the world of art and photography has largely overlooked and/or ignored. Maybe there is a limited market for luminous ghostly images – no matter how much artistic value is added to crudely drawn images.
Finally, on a lighter note, assertions that the Shroud image, and that image alone, uniquely contains encoded 3D information is what I call Mickey Mouse science, and is perhaps best answered with the following:
And it’s not just my ‘cartoon’ that responds to the 3D treatment (thanks ImageJ).
Addendum: added 14 May. I have received an email from an image-researcher regarding my 3D techniques (using ImageJ software). Without stating chapter-and-verse, here’s a screen grab that shows three stages of smoothing, i.e. from zero through 12.0 to 33.0.
- 3D imaging with three levels of smoothing (ImageJ)
It shows how the 3D image starts as the addition of a vertical z axis, and then converts each pixel from 2D to 3D by elongating along the new vertical z axis in proportion to the pixel density (zero smoothing, first on left). Smoothing then … smooths.
Overview (based on some 30 or so postings to date, and heavily influenced by the Lirey Pilgrim’s Badge, aka Cluny Medal -see my previous post):
The Turin Shroud is of 14th century provenance, but it is neither a hoax nor a fake. It was commissioned, by the knightly Geoffroi de Charny and his wife as a monument – but a monument with a difference. It was not a 3D monument, of marble or wrought iron, but a novel 2D monument of scorched fabric, fashioned as if a burial shroud. Why go to all that trouble? Answer: because it had to be a muted monument, one that could be easily rolled up and hidden away, given that anti-Templar sentiment was still rife in the Church and State in early 14th century France. Furthermore, it was cleverly conceived as a metaphor that was fitting to that era of French history, specifically to the hideous manner in which the last of the Knights Templar were slow-roasted, i.e.scorched to death in 1314, most famously Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charney (Charney-with-an “e”, who some believe was the nephew of the Charny who died at the stake). Again, I believe the image on the Shroud to be a scorch, a thermal imprint from a 3D, or semi-3D bas relief, either metal or baked clay. That makes the image not just a thermograph, but a ‘tactilograph’ too, one that has captured the relief, i.e. contours of the hot template. That would explain the high degree of ‘encoded 3D information’ – but note that the latter can be demonstrated with a 2D sketch alone, as shown by Irene Corgiat with her pyrograph, and here in this posting with nothing more than a stick of charcoal.