Quote - What do you use CrazyBump for?

 

Similar thing to what you showed in Bryce.

Bumpmaps work of the image lights and darks, and the lightest part of the image is the highest on the map, and the darkest is the lowest. I think most people know this, I'm just sort of going over it for the sake of thoroughness :)

What happens on many photographs of relief is that the brightest part of the image is not always the highest part on the bumpmap. When an image is plugged in to work as a bump map, this can lead to distorted relief.

For example, and image taken at noon, with the light straight up may very well make for a pretty darn accurate bump map, where the gifhest part of relief does get most light. Most of the time, the light comes at an angle, and the brightest part of the image is sort of sideways - to put it in simple terms.
The brightest part of the reflected light is always on a surface perpendicular to the angle of the incoming light ...blah blah blah... )

When someone wants to be really precise about how their relief looks, they can use this little program to correct that, and get a bump map that looks like the picture was taken at noon, and get a more precise relief out of their bump map.

I hope I didn't complicate the explanation too much here :)

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