Thank for the comments. Obviously I was looking for a more abstract interpretation and not accurately representing the leaves. The color version is kind of bland. I went through a bw version with less contrast that was almost equally appealing to me but then I was drawn to the dark side and came up with this bleaker version.
I could easily lighten the left side; starting in the center of the flower (positioned roughly by the rule of thirds for whatever it's worth) and following the leaves to the right was mostly by design, partially by the limitations of what I could reliably stitch. I was hoping the center is interesting enough that you will come back to it and do this all over again. Obviously it's not working this way for at least some of you.
I was assuming that the contrast and the composition was the point... so they didn't distract me from anything else. As a graphic image I like it.
Why don't you just ask yourself: "would I be happy to hang this on my wall?" (or put it in an album that you show to people, or whatever... do you smile when you see it?)
I think I would.
I do like it but I was ready to give up on it and then this came better than it appeared it will so I might be beyond being objective, therefore this post.
PS. in this last version of Photoshop something is screwed up, I cannot delete the layer masks as I used to in order to touch up the stitching errors and I can't figure out why. This made me install Helicon Focus and Zerene but their results were not significantly better, at least not the Helicon one.
