click photo to enlarge"Automatically adjusts the image using Auto Color, Auto Contrast and Auto Levels." That's what a piece of software I sometimes use says the "Auto Adjust" control does; and it's really unpredictable. Sometimes it works on the unprocessed image to give it a touch more "snap", other times it takes the camera's flat-looking output and renders it to look much more like what the eye saw. But then there are times when it goes all psychedelic on you - as it did with this shot of the pink rose that I presented in black and white the other day.
What Auto Adjust appears to have done in this instance is to take what the human eye sees as a monotone flower, measure the slight differences in colour where the sky, leaves and nearby flowers have subtley changed the hue, and then emphasise those areas whilst increasing the contrast. When I saw its output I thought it would look good as a chintz, or perhaps as a composite image with the flower repeated after being rotated through 90 degrees. I've tried this sort of thing before here and here, so I decided to give it another go! It's not everyone's idea of what photography is about, but it pleases me to try this stuff now and then.
photograph & text (c) T. Boughen
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f9
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On
