WOW, awesome feedback guys, thanks! This is great for learning! A little technical info:
All three are 200 mm macro shots taken with a cheapy wannabe SLR the Knoica Minolta A2 (non-detachable lens). A Kenko MC UV SL-39 filter was used but I doubt it had much affect - it's mostly to keep birdy bombs off the actual lens while shooting the sky above. All were cropped and scaled:
1) About 15% cut off the left side and scaled to 30%
2) About 50% cut off the left and bottom area and scaled 50%
3) About 10% off the right side and scaled to 25%
Processing was limited to full-frame sharpening USM 10% at 50 Pixels, an additional USM at 60% with 1.75 pixels, and whatever looked good for the CameraRAW settings during import into PS.
By kind of an interesting accident (I was thinking about adding a border)
B/WStyler applied this preset when I first ran it:
The colors might do some of the subject isolation you all mentioned.
Hehe, I saved off a copy real quick when it did that cuz I thought it looked kinda cool.
It needs tweaking to actually be usable like this tho - I think.
Thanks again for all the feedz and for those voting only it's also very useful and I appreciate it allot! So I thank you too!