I had a real hard time with the yellows in this image. The histogram of the posted image no longer shows any blown colour channels, but the feather detail still seems pretty "smooth" to me. Any comments and suggestions would be appreciated. I took this in a garden set-up.
Although you have no more blown colour channels to me the yellows still look "hot". The yellows, and the perch also look much too bright. Perhaps a combination of reducing the exposure and desaturating more would do the trick. Be sure to read the thread I mention though...it pertains exactly to your situation :-)
Last edited by Daniel Cadieux; 12-14-2009 at 11:56 AM.
Reason: typos
Good-looking bird, I particularly like the eye and head angle. Daniel made great suggestions, I would add that it would be nice to see more of the tail or have the bird on a smaller perch.
The comp and birds pose are terrific. It appears that the red channel was heavily clipped and even lowering the exposure and saturation in post is not going to bring back the details that were lost there. You might try a linear raw conversion to see if you can work with that.