Digital Re-Design for a Heritage Garden

This photograph from yesterday's posting has attracted quite a lot of interest and generated discussion on a number of issues so here it is again. 

The first thing to point out is that this photo of The Old Cottage Garden at "The Drip" has been tinkered with. The gate that appears in the original version of the photo has been digitally airbrushed out.  Similarly the gravel on the realigned path is "digital gravel".  And the white seat at the end of the path is of course just a quick computer-generated sketch designed to establish a scale for the real thing. Ditto  the two circles representing balls of clipped Teucrium fruticans.  This technique is something we are using more and more.  Taking a photo from the most significant viewing position, in this case from the doors to the library, then tinkering around with a few quick ideas sketched in digitally is helping us save a lot of time and money by getting a clear idea of what things will look like before we commit real resources to achieving it.

To achieve these modifications took less than five minutes and these days it really requires no great skill in graphics technology to do simple operations such as this.  Software such as Photoshop or Paint has made what was once the preserve of highly trained graphics professionals accessible to all and the software is rapidly becoming even more powerful and more user friendly.  Who would have ever thought that an old time Australian cottage garden would be re-designed with high technology one hundred and fifty years after the first settlers here battled to establish a foothold in this harsh environment?  How times change.