Maple leaf: 1/50s f/5.6 ISO400 195mm, Canon 30D, EF 70-200 f2.8 L IS, adjusted

I rarely have reason to change the contrast of my images, but sometimes it is just what is needed. The image above started life as a much paler version:

It was taken in very diffuse light and the contrast was very low. Rather than increase the saturation as I usually do, I found that increasing the contrast dramatically had the desired effect. A small increase in the exposure was also needed:

The new version has much more depth than the original because there is enough detail to separate the leaf from the background.

Tags: Aperture, Canon, 30D, Contrast, Adjustments, Leaves

Leaves as artwork clearly represent the current frontier of web design. Now we have Versions, available as a beta that promises to make subversion easy to use on the Mac. That would be very nice since I use an assortment of tools right now and it is not a very satisfactory arrangement.

Linus argues that none of this is worth anything (the video is long but worth the time -- much clearer than reading the text of the talk). The comments are all over the map. That's a good sign that he is right. If the experience of users is so scattered that no-one can even agree what the problem is, then something is seriously wrong. What exists today is barely usable. It just doesn't feel that way because having anything is so much better than having nothing at all.

Tags: Subversion, Leaves, Xcode