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I can usually decide which version of an image looks best...colour or B&W. But here's one where I am truely stumped. Both versons look great...but which one looks best?
What's your opinion?

I am going to have to vote monochrome

Don't know why but the colour one keeps my attention longer.

The colour works better for me. I'm not sure that the monochrome's quite right. Maybe darken the cyan/blues for more separation between sky and ground. Maybe lighten the greens in the tree to go for an infrared effect. I think maybe it's too flat and the lighter places (where the eye tends to go) are in the background. Opposite approach: lighten the background (earth and sky).

I find the bush in the background less distracting in the mono.

The second for me as the eye focuses more on the pattern from both subjects. There's a faint highlight by the clouds on the foreground subject as well, it's subtle but effective with the b&w.

The colour contains too much contrast.

You are right, both are equal I reckon.

Rooz wrote:I find the bush in the background less distracting in the mono.

I find it more distracting as it blends to the main subject!

Even though I recently purchased (for my wife's birthday) a huge coffee table book of Ansel Adams' works, I am not a great fan of BW photography. (I admit it; I'm a strange and tiny minority here). Hence, I vote for the colour image.

I wouldn't be able to choose either... some will prefer colour, others b&w but that's more about preference rather than which is actually better.
There is nothing in this image, that I see, to influence it one way or the other.
I might suggest trying a few other processing options (sepia, ir, etc, etc) to find what doesn't work !!!

Monochrome

I prefer the monochrome one.

I prefer the mono Matt

I prefer the colour one. Why don't you call it
"Going With The Wind"? It has a touch of
Hollywood appeal.

I think that there's nothing here that a chainsaw and a combine harvester wouldn't have fixed, leaving just the main tree in a stark monochrome landscape enhanced by tonal jiggerypokery and an IR conversion.