Mechtild's

Yes, it's a wonderful adjustment, isn't it, Este? I tried and tried on my old program to lighten the images more, but if I did it a little too much, the images would become washed-out and anaemic. This program does a beautiful job of illuminating dark scenes. I used it for the "Frodo enquires of Mr. Butterbur" caps I just did. The dark caps are fine on the big screen in a theatre, but they are difficult to see well if viewed on a normal TV or a computer monitor.

Yes, they really came out gorgeously, didn't they? I'll bet the original footage looked like this, which they later darkened in post-production to make it look more ominous and moody.

It's the throat, Shirebound. We talked about it here several months ago in this LJ. Taerie, who is an artist and a horse fancier pointed it out. No matter how beautiful film Frodo is, no matter how superficially fragile-looking, he never looks less than fully male. Why? She pointed it out on stallions when compared to geldings. It's the neck. Ungelded males have very powerful necks. It happens in cats, too. Toms have very thick neck areas, which neutered male cats never develop.

I thought that was a fascinating observation, which I will never forget.

I have started working with "Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006 Editor."

I simply opened the image to work on, and choose "Exposure and Lighting" from the "Touchup" menu. After fiddling around with the manual adjustments, I reset and tried clicking, "Contrast Auto Fix". It worked GREAT for these really dark screencaps. I had been hand-tweaking all of my screencaps on my older program, the "auto-fix" on it not very helpful. But the Auto Fix on this Microsoft program worked the best on these really dark images.

I didn't use, "Exposure Auto Fix," however, on the same Menu for these. It made the images too pale, compared to their original conditions.

I only changed the contrast level, Wendy, not the colour values. Whatever were the colour values in the film footage (which lightened) are what is showing. I've noticed EW's eyes look different colours in his various shoots. I don't know if that is totally natural, though. Photographers could be overlaying their final work with different tones and shadings, just to get a certain mood. If they warm up a sweater shot, say, they might add enough yellow to make his eyes greenish. I've seen some in which I thought his eyes were hazel. But in most LotR and non-LotR shots they look remarkably blue.

Are you saying the background of your journal page makes his eyes much bluer?

Yes, that throat. I already swooned over it in a comment above. That neck of film-Frodo's did more than any other body part to make him perceived by fans as utterly hot and sexy. It's a very, very male neck, which adds a sort of masculine voluptuousness to his extreme beauty.