Colours into tones 1

My aim here was to produce two black and white versions of a colour image containing two strong contrasting colours using the channel sliders in my Lightroom software.  I chose an image taken last autumn - leaves collected  between the base of a car window screen and the car bonnet. - and began with making a default 'black and white' version.




P582: F5 @1/160  ISO 80  11mm  Canon IXUS 210

 

P583 :Default black and white version

 

 

P584 below is the result of darkening the grayscale of the yellow and lightening the contrasting blue.

 

P584

 

 

 

P585

 

The second version (P585) above is the result of lightening the yellow and darkening the grayscale of the blue.

 

Looking at the three black and white versions, a number of thoughts occurred to me. Would transforming the colour image into black and white result in losing the distinct nature of the image i.e. leaves though possessing significant visual interest through the line, shape and texture of each leave photographed for their distinctive autumnal colour. Again would the composition be sufficient to hold the interest without the colour ?  The version where I darkened the yellow tone while lightening the contrasting blue (P584)  resulted in significantly less leaf detail becoming more abstract with an interesting  play of light and shadow within the tones and a clear cut image of the car bonnet. Reversing the process brought out the leaf shapes more and a far more contrasty feel to the overall image - I felt that I could almost see the autumn sunshine playing across the leaves. The abstract nature of the composition is different with the curve of the bonnet less obvious.  Which version do I prefer? P585  I suspect due to the 'sunshine' lifting the image ..it feels less flat than the default black and white and nearer to the original colour image for this very reason.