Hi
Looking for opinions. The colors & quality does not even resemble the orig. I guess due to compression.
Thx
Susan

I like the unsharpness of the petals, I tend to try more to get a perfect record of the flower and use smaller aperture to increase DoF. As a result it my photos seemed to lack a little something.
I will try a few your way and see if I can get something interesting.

I am a little distracted by the dead bloom in the upper right. I find my eye flicking from the dead head, to the purple petal dead centre, then to the in-focus head, and then all over again. A little unsettling. Also cutting that flower dead centre through the head as the main subject is a little too symmetrical for my taste. I would like to see a bit more to the left - perhaps to the point where the flower changes from orange to black in the centre?
But that's just me. Who was it said you ask 5 photographers and you get 7 opinions?

Compression shouldn't affect the colours, but it might affect the sharpness.
I use ThumbsPlus to manage my image galleries on my PC (tracking CD, DVD, and hard disk contents).
When I produce a file for upload here I use a Unsharp Mask Gaussian filter to sharpen the image, then reduce it to 75% of its size, then filter it again, then resize again, (lather, rinse, repeat) until I get down to 640 pixels width that is the widest for upload here.
That keeps the sharpness and detail fairly well when reducing from an 8mp image.

PAuL thx for looking and sharing your opinions, also I appreciate your info on resizing on image in order to post.
Thx
Susan

Hi
Looking for opinions. The colors & quality does not even resemble the orig. I guess due to compression.
Thx
Susan

Nice image and I like the idea of the crop, but don't feel you went far enough with it. I think I would enjoy the photo more with a more drastic crop of top and right side of the image. Very nice colors and detial in the center of the flower.

Hi:
Thx for the input. Is this better?
Thx
Susan