Thanks for all of your comments everyone. IC2944, the "Running Chicken Nebula" is an interesting object to process particularly if one is looking for some point of difference given the proliferation of published images of this area. Partly for these reasons I've decided to stick with a slightly warmer palette and kept the (de-emphasised) stars whilst including the starless as the 'background' image. Apart from all this I just like it of course
CS,
Rodney