Tall Ironweed + Repost

Jim, I think that you have very well represented the cold nice flower, new for me. I love the contrast with the warm soft background.
Trying to critique the image, my eyes have a general feeling of too high sharpening. This works beautifully with the iced parts of the flower but worse for me with the others parts: leaf, blossoms ... I would have worked with mask and brush. Jim, the sharpness is a very subjective matter and your eyes may have a quite different idea about this.

Thank you Gigi! I redid the stack and played around with exposure (+.4), brightness contrast, and highlights and shadows and managed to brighten the scene and reduced the blue cast to the original image. I sharpened it slightly after resizing for the jpeg. Let me what you think about the new version. Thank you...........................Jim

Jim, my opinion: something in the middle. Shifting the new image in a level over the previous one, with level opacity you can find the best solution for you. In the same time with mask and brush you could raise the iced elements up from the sharper image.
It seem that working together on the image can offer better results for both.

Jim, between the two, I very much favor the first. This is a plant that begs for sharpness. I say push the envelope. I also think you made the right decision in cloning out the dead blossom. I use Topaz almost exclusively now, and my studied conclusion is that you can try too hard quite easily to pull out structure. I think you did just right here, though.

Jim: I really like the original and will ditto Phil regarding the spent flower. Very nice work. >=))>

It's jeweled! Interesting subject complimented by a gorgeous background. Post-processing definitely brought the best in this flower; good decision to clone out the dead lower flower.