Same image, just different.......first/top original untouched version, fresh out of camera. Second/middle with color balance. Third/bottom with desaturation and fiddling with contrast among other things. I actually like all 3 even the original, with it's yellowishness. One thing I could have done would have been to burn the bottom right corner a bit...seems to be bothersome to me now that I look at it more. I'm posting this because I'm not sure which is my fav and wanted opinions....also because Chuck made an interesting point in a post a a couple of threads down about different ways to approach an image. I thought this might be a reasonable example of that.

Thanks for the comment, Michelle. (I must ask right away if it's OK to say that instead of "Michelle A. I must also say it's weird 'cause that's my wife's name...spelled the same way). If this forum is about getting opinions instead of a never-ending string of pats on the back, then this proves it. So, what follows is my personal opinion: I like the second image the best. I think the best reason I can come up with is the richness of the greeen in the background. The yellowish green in the first one struck me as "sickly". It's nice to be able to do some color balancing...in my days, it was a no no (except I did some cibrachrome for a while). B&W was easier. Dodge and burn. As to flowers in B&W...I may be weird. It always seems a shame to lose the color. But with orchids, bromeliads, etc., sometimes the shading and delicacy outweighs the color. Or, perhaps closeups of petals and "light-play". That's just me, though.

This to me looks like it would have been a perfect candidate for using a gray card, so that the overall color balance was dead on.

In the first image the petals seem to pick up a fair amount of grays and looks a bit dirty.

The second image eliminates these and is better, but it looses details in the whites and looks a little blown out. (At least on my monitor) It also seems that the water drops disappear in this one.

The B&W with this subject just doesn't seem right, but that is just my opinion.

Thanks for the 'pinions...I appreciate them...I just realized that I have a grey card that came with my Kodak Photoguide....I'll be sticking that in my camera bag! I couldn't resist ordering a book on the Zone System, and one on Spot Metering....after a recent thread on tones and zones (heh)....I'm gonna lick this shyte even if it kills me... I couldn't quite figure out how to save the details of the water droplets in PS on the middle image, I did try....maybe if I was more skilled at the program I could've done better with that. :~/

Sometimes our opinion of a print is based on where we see it. Dominate room color, lighting and matting, etc. Having the three together gives the viewer a good choice. My aim would be to produce the color balanced version. If you are learning Zone and Color balance techinques you are well into this business/hobby..It certainly won't kill you although it does make you more critical of your own work. I have been re-reading Walther Benser's "More Color Magic" from 1960. Principals don't change! Bill

Right, principles don't change. And we have better tools with the advent of the home PC!