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But it's not a lit by any virtual light. It's just using a texture made from the various microscopic imager exposures. There is no "shading" involved. Being 3D does not imply virtial lights and shading. What they are doing here is analogous to what in the 3D community is called "baking a texture light map".

I hate to state the obvious... But haven't you noticed that the tiff image (also available on JPEG form on the MER website: [http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … B019R1.jpg]here) is a rendering of a 3D model of the cliff face - and not a photo?

That's why the edges aren't straight - because they used the microscopic imager to take multiple images at different distances, using the data to compile a 3D model of the cliff face, then a composite of all the images was projected over the 3D model as a texture. This gives them the ability to examine the shape of the rock more throuroughly. The "liquify" look of parts of the image is due to the lack of sufficient precision of the 3D model at some edges - and it also explains the "stepped" look at the edges of the model.

It's really just a more detailed kind of work like what they are doing in this image, having mapped part of the crater in 3D: [http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … B019R1.jpg]http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery....9R1.jpg

Keiths site is very cool, and the images may "look" more aestetically pleasing - but he still does a good amount of guesswork when it comes to de-normalize (or adjust for exposure) the wavelength channels.

We can all play around in photoshop to enhance images (color, contrast, and more...) so they look more pleasing to us - but personally I'm interested in how it really looks on Mars. And until JPL released all the "meta"-data for the raw channel images - which will include exposure and normalization information - I trust that the JPL imaging guys will give us the most accurate view.

But pretty pictures are nice too...