[minimeeze]

I was trawling from some of my old holiday snaps from Thailand and particularly liked this shot - one of the first snaps taken with my D70 Can't remember any details, other than it was taken handheld, on auto programme with my 28-80 lens. I have no idea what the flower is either - it was growing outside the hut I was staying in

I have cropped and brightened it using levels in PS... how could this be improved as it isn't really punchy enough?

[jewel]

I like this one minimeeze, nice vibrant colours! I like the DOF chosen here too. I think it has punch!

Jewel

[CT]

It looks plenty punchy enough to me ... really nice. Using Auto means you've got more DOF than you really need. If you had used a wider aperture on AV or Manual, the bloom would have been more isolated from the background, but you know better now.

It's still a nice shot and I don't see how you could really improve it other than a different crop, and that all depends on what you had to work with with the original.

[SammyC]

I think you could just brighten it very slightly but that's being really picky!

As others have said, great shot with plenty of punch.

[lolyton]

Sometimes you need to leave an image for a while and then come back to it else you'll go too far. I think this is about bang on (certainly on my screen), it looks vibrant yet still natural. Any more punch and it's libel to give you a black eye which in my opinion probably isn't the best thing!

[Dave]

Cracking shot

[minimeeze]

Maybe it's my monitor I just thought it lacked something..

[Dave]

Colours can't be taken any further without looking false.......less is more & all that

[Boo]

spot on colour saturation, love it.

[RickMezza]

Like the colours too Minimeeze. I guess that would have been a really bright flower anyway, and as DJW said above, any more saturation would have made it look false IMHO.
Rich