P3D Re: Reading pictures left to right

[Dan Vint <dvint@xxxxxxxx>]

Besides photography I spend a lot of time in desktop publishing which also
has lots of rules/guidelines. I recently was able to spend time working
with a Japanese writer/editor who was in charge of translating our English
technical manuals into Japanese. Now there are lots of rules about not
using all upper case letters and using lots of white space when it comes to
English books - in Japanese none of these seems to matter!

I'm wondering if the left-to-right rule is based upon a left-to-right
reading/writing mode? Does this rule hold up in Japan where it is a
right-to left an top-to bottom writing/reading mode? Has anyone studied or
had experience with International competitions that were sponsored and
juried by a non left-to-write biased judges?

Just a thought ...

..dan


At 08:03 AM 2/3/00 -0700, you wrote:
>Jim Kunkel demonstrated how a picture is “read” left to write. 
>If you have a bright area off center, this should be in the left
>side, not the right, because the eye is attracted to it and it
>is drawn out of the frame if it is in the right.  He showed
>examples of such pictures.  The eye scans the picture from the
>left, hits the center of interest and then is attracted by the
>bright area in the right and is drawn out of the picture.  By
>switching the image front to back, the bright area is now on the
>left.  The eye enters from the left, moves from the bright area
>to the center of interest and then it stops because now the
>right side is dark.  There is no way out!
>
>This might explain why sometimes we like a picture more as seen
>backwards instead of seeing it from the front, as recoded.  I
>have been wondering about this... Actually, there are two
>factors working here, IMO.  First, we have the tendency to
>prefer an image as we saw it for the first time.  Sometimes, I
>view a slide the wrong way in the SSA folios.  Then, when I
>reverse it to look at it properly, most of the times I do not
>like the correct orientation.  I will have to force myself to
>forget the “first impression” and then be able to tell which
>orientation I prefer.
>
>Does anyone have a similar experience or ideas in the F/B
>viewing issue?
>
>George Themelis
>
>
>=====
>George Themelis, DrT-3d@xxxxxxx
>http://home.att.net/~drt-3d/
>__________________________________________________
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>


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