[font color=\'#000000\']The second one looks a little overly saturated in the yellows for my taste, but otherwise they look quite fine color-wise and contrast-wise. Not having seen the actual scene, they look quite natural to me (other than the yellow in the second one).
Lisa[/font]
[font color=\'#000000\']Lisa,
It actually was the dominant yellow that caused me to even stop and take the second picture. But I have to tell you that the scene was quite "dead" in person. I didn't even notice much about the logs in the scene untill I viewed it on my monitor.
As far as color balance goes, I chose to go with the suggested "as shot" auto WB, probably about 4000k, when converted from raw. While I did optimize overall RGB levels, I did nothing to any of the individual channels. There is probably overall a 25% saturation boost before all is said and done.
The shadow/highlight recovery really made the logs detailed and the foliage "dreamy" looking. I played around a bit with the setting on that, restricting each to a very narrow band of influence and then boosting to taste.
I may start experimenting with this more.[/font]