Jane McGary lamented the practice of using image editing software to jazz up flower colors. One way to keep yourself honest is to use a 17% neutral gray card as background, or just for separate reference shots under the same conditions and at the time of taking your picture(s). The Rix-Phillips books (among them, the wonderful Bulb Book, aka Random House Book of Bulbs) use such as a background for the studio shots, and to the extent that the printed version of the gray card is tinted, you can get an idea of what kind of color imbalance the photograph has. I believe—correct me if I'm wrong—that digital cameras have more faithful color rendition than film cameras. With film, it's almost impossible to get blue flowers to look like anythng other than a murky purple. Furthermore, film tended to reproduce all reds in a highly saturated fire engine red: a sort of one color fits all approach. Perhaps this exaggeration of reds is connected with the poor reproduction of blues. Another technique that can be very helpful on occasion is to open the diaphragm of your lens to the maximum aperture. This beshallows the depth of field, throwing the background out of focus and emphasizing the subject. If you use this technique, be sure that the camera's autofocus system is focussing on the subject, however. Using a wide aperture also gives shorter exposure times and can help reduce movement due to wind. -- Rodger Whitlock Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Maritime Zone 8, a cool Mediterranean climate on beautiful Vancouver Island http://maps.google.ca/maps/…