First, this is about an interesting thing that happened to a photo that garnered a lot of positive comments……..this is not about any kind of problem but an unexpected and pretty cool unintended effect.

I posted an in progress photo of a set of building to the WPF thread about a week ago.

https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/weekly-photo-fun-march-10-2019-to-march-16-2019-12212406

Some comments were made on the thread and through emails that the “blacked out” background was really cool and how did I do it?

My response……….HUH? No blacked out background here.

I let it go as some form of miscommunication, spell check mis-correction…who knows.

Well, a few more clues came up.

Here’s the back story.

I took a quick iPad shot of the model on my workbench surrounded by the typical disaster of my less than clean “creative” process.

No way that photo is going onto the WPF thread as the clutter made it difficult to focus on the model.

Here’s the original photo in reduced form.

I put the photo into my photo editing program and raised the exposure, cleared it up a little and (the important info) erased the clutter. This is normal process for me.

Here’s a snippet that shows erasing in progress

Here’s photo with background completely erased. White background. Right? Still white when you click on it to expand? It is here.

I asked Goober to send me screenshots of photo as shown on the thread compressed and clicked (expanded to original submission)

Standard compression used by forum to bring the photo in line with horizontal space available. Looks just like it does on my 3 computers. No black background.

Here’s the screenshot when the photo is clicked. YIKES!!!!!!! A black background. THAT’S COOL!

Here’s what I have discovered. If I am wrong (or right) let me know. Yes, I know how to intentionally create this effect. It is the unintentional, variable aspect that got my attention.

The effect is a combination of how the forum and the browser handle PNG files. I commonly use PNG export in my editing program due to the benefits in compositing a photo for structure use. When you erase the more commonly used JPEG file it leaves white in place of what you have erased with the borders still intact but PNG leaves blank space so the new edited photo no longer has the borders of the original image. I’m not technically schooled in photography so I’m probably not explaining it correctly but hope you get the idea.

Next step….the forum needs the file to be reduced to 750 px wide to play nice with the allotted width. OK. But it seems to keep the original file available so if you click on a photo that has been reduced during load in it will display a full version of the file. Every time I have clicked on a photo of mine or anybody’s I get a nice big, clear look at an image that is identical to the reduced one only much better resolution. Very cool. But never a black background.

Cutting to the chase. It is the fact that with these PNG files I submit that different browsers handle the negative space in different manners. If the PNG file has the usual rectangular format with no negative space you’ll not see any difference when a full resolution file is shown on the MRH forum when using Safari or Firefox. BUT if you look at it with Chrome it inserts a black background into the negative space. Might be a preference, who knows?

Anyway, that’s as far as I have taken it. All the above photos are JPEG.

Here’s the original PNG file. What happens when YOU click on it?

If it still a white background try it with Chrome.