Love the repro and I can understand why it's better. In the first one M42 is saturated to the max, especially the blues and sticks out like a fly on a white wall. It doesn't blend in the whole view as well as your repro. The red in the barnard loop doesn't match the red in the HH region and the red in the lower right of your field. In your repro it is color balanced nicely across the whole field. Finally the relative luminosity in different parts of the barnard loop is more homogeneous than in the first shot. You've also made the core of M42 brighter which is correct. When you look at the whole field it is a massive improvement so I got to say well done.
