PROJECT: the two stand dims do not stack, and centre court is graded off a lifted target

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

PROJECT.md

@@ -374,10 +374,17 @@ zombie (now an occasional opponent, `TUNE.racketEvery`, not the every-game fixtu
   stack at once so the frames cannot drift apart in colour. They were three separate rolls until
   2026-08-21, and the cost of that was exactly what Oliver reported: "the whole thing somehow does
   not translate well to the other courts, there the difference is barely visible."
-- **The stand sits BACK.** `TUNE.standBack` (0.22) dims the crowd and the boards on every court,
-  before the night court's own `dim` and the splatter rot. Oliver: "all of the art could be colored
-  a little more dim as it is perspective wise farther in the background and should not steal too
-  much attention." It is the only thing on screen that is thirty metres away.
+- **The stand sits BACK, and the two dims do NOT stack.** `standDim` is `court.dim ?? TUNE.standBack`
+  plus the splatter rot — a court that names its own darkness REPLACES the default instead of
+  adding to it. Adding was the first cut and it made two courts unreadable: centre court's crowd
+  sheet is a night-lit navy to begin with and the night court dims 0.5 on top of the hard-court
+  sheet, so both went to mud (Oliver: "it is too dim to see anything on the centre court and the
+  dark court"). Centre court therefore carries `dim: 0.06` of its own, and its sheet is also
+  graded off a LIFTED target (gamma 0.72 in `_crowdpass.py`) because the old centre-court crowd
+  it matches sat at a mean luminance of 39 against clay's 96 — dark enough to throw the new
+  roll's detail away before the dim even ran. On the default itself: "all of the art could be
+  colored a little more dim as it is perspective wise farther in the background and should not
+  steal too much attention."
   `assets/_sheet_crowd1.png` is the pre-brightening original of the FIRST crowd, kept for history.
 
 ## Settled feel decisions — do not regress silently
@@ -2624,8 +2631,11 @@ question and the answer to the first half of the first one.
   Measured: 2-3% of the stand band changes every 90 ms during a won game, against near zero before.
 - **One file per court instead of two.** Three frames stacked vertically, graded as one image so the
   frames cannot drift apart in colour, and `x_crowd2`/`x_crowd_c2`/`x_crowd_h2` are deleted.
-- **`TUNE.standBack` 0.22** — the whole stand, on every court, pushed back before anything else is
-  added. One knob, applied in the one place both the cached backdrop and the live raisers read.
+- **`TUNE.standBack` 0.22** — the stand pushed back, applied in the one place both the cached
+  backdrop and the live raisers read. It is a DEFAULT, not a floor: stacking it on top of the
+  two courts that already dim themselves buried them, so `court.dim` replaces it, centre court
+  claims a 0.06 of its own, the night court came down 0.62 -> 0.5, and centre court's sheet is
+  graded off a lifted target so there is something under the dim to see.
 
 ## THE STAND STOPS WOBBLING, AND STARTS BEING A CROWD (2026-08-21)