Regarding mahouston69's density examination:
I do not claim to be a Photoshop expert, and I didn't sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night. But I have worked with Photoshop extensively for 13 years.
The problem I see with trying to match density numbers, using the color picker, etc., is this:
The truck headlight is "blown out." The density of the white color has reached one side of the spectrum and cannot go any higher. This is evidenced by the fact that the truck headlight looks much larger than its actual size. The light is so intense that it has overwhelmed the camera sensors to the extent that pure white pixels have been created that are not actually there. The same thing happened to the speed-limit sign in the Versailles Mickey pic. The white light from under the Cathedral-Carmel bus canopy overblew the sensor to the point where it wrapped around the sign and created false pixels.
This effect can be liked to a thermometer left in the sunlight reading at the very top of the scale, even though the air temperature may be 85 degrees, or that of an 85-mph speedometer on a car that is doing 110, pegged against the top stop at 85.
The intense white color of the truck light created an oversized, maxed out, splotch on the camera sensor that bled over to other pixels.
It is possible that the density of the reflection that I describe above, of the truck headlight reflecting off the camera lens, then bouncing off the inside of the plexiglas dome (the reflection that some see as Mickey's headlight), may also possibly be attributed to this maxing-out effect, as well as the density of the known picture of her headlight.
We don't know the percentage by which the incoming bike headlight overblew the camera sensor. It is possible that enough light from the truck headlight reflected off of the lens that its reflection on the inside of the dome (the alleged "bike-under-truck headlight") still had an intense-enough white light to max out the white color and make it appear to be the same density as that of the known photo of Mickey's headlight.
Simply put, an 85-mph speedometer on a car reads the same whether the car is doing 90 or 110.
This effect cannot be definitively detected using Photoshop alone, IMO, without taking into account the technical details of the camera, which we don't have.
To restate, if the light on Mickey's bike, seen in the pic of her in front of Circle K, is at one end of the density spectrum - which it could be, as it is brighter than its surroundings (and we have no way of knowing this without a very technical analysis of the camera specs), how do we know that the reflection of an "overblown" truck headlight, bouncing off the camera lens, wouldn't still be blown out enough to appear to be the same density?
Again, if our speedometer goes to 85 - and the truck headlight is definitely "blown out," as evidenced by its obvious oversized appearance, how do we know that both the actual picture of Mickey's light, and what I deem a reflection (which others see as "Mickey's light under the truck"), are not both figuratively traveling faster than 85 mph - and yet figuratively reading 85 on the nose, in Photoshop, and so falsely appearing the same?
Had the color been somewhere in the middle of the density spectrum, it would be different. But IMO it is not possible to use a blown-out light source, maxed against one end of the scale and thereby creating pure white pixels, to definitively conclude that the light source in the known picture of Mickey's headlight, and the light under the truck, are one and the same.
