Color getting washed out?

I have been on a quest to improve the color I get on my snake pics. I thought that if I could get the white background to look white, then the rest should be correct. Wrong! I've gotten a white background that looks white by doing a custom white balance and exposure bracketing on my Canon 40D. Now, it looks like I've lost some color, mostly the orange hues, from what I can tell. Any suggestions?

Any pictures?

Are you shooting in RAW?

Do you have Adobe Lightroom?

I'll post some pics tonight.

I don't have Adobe Lightroom and I'm pretty sure I'm not shooting in RAW.

You should really think about switching over to RAW

The Fro Knows Photo website is really helpful

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW6cA...layer_embedded

I think the biggest problem was the white balance card I used. I just took some photos with a different card (that looked to my eye like it was the same color, just a different material), and it looks better.

Here's one of those washed out pics I took:
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/j...i/IMG_2331.jpg

This is a pic of the same snake, using a different white balance card:
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/j...IMG_2399_3.jpg

The second pic is a more accurate depiction of his color, and probably of the white background I used, though the background looks nicer in the first one. Oh well, you can't win them all!

Now, my next project will be to look into shooting in RAW....

Instead of metering for the card. Set the wb to auto, and meter off the subject. If you are shooting raw. You can change that in a program after. I use lightroom 3. I shoot Nikon, not sure what the canon program is that comes with the camera. The one that comes with the nikons. Think its called Viewnx. Not sure if it will work with the canon raw files, but it may work. In the viewnx2 you can edit exposure,wb and all that I think. Once you start shooting raw, and have a program that can edit the raw file. You can set your white balance to auto. Then in post processing you can tweak the wb how you want it. Here are some great links to understanding how shutter,ISO,aperture affect the image. Also stuff on wb and other things that people need to know when shooting with a dslr. First things first, before you can start taking mind blowing pictures. You need to learn your camera. What this does, how that affects the image? What happens if I add some of this, or turn this dial? Learn the camera, and go from there. Here are the links. Some great info
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/techniques.htm
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials.htm