Thanks for your many comments gentlemen, much appreciated:
- I like the B&W version also,
- actually the color image got only minor adjustements in LR (landscape camera profile, a bit of clarity and vibrance, no saturation tweak) and zero in PS (only resizing), the colors of the scene were just amazing with a dakk rainy atmosphere adding to the original colors of the tree trunks,
- The background is indeed much brighter than the foreground, but this is unavoidable in such scenes. The key in my book is to use a lens free of CA to keep clean colors are the edges of the trees/leaves in the over-exposed area. The scene did indeed feel pretty dark, but I wanted to retain the right tones in the main tree and I believe that this is mostly achieved althrough I like Steve's version also,
- the WB is indeed a tweak of the auto WB value made warmer, I am also not 100% happy about the current result, but it seems fairly close to what I remember of the scene,
- the stitching is for sure overkill for web posting, but those images are intended to be printed large on the Epson 9900,
Cheers,
Bernard