Rook

John,
I think this should be a little blacker, just off to find out what Image Guru is

Right Ken. Posted wrong one !(no signature)
Heres a darker one.
Image Guru is  also known as Vimas and is a plug in for adjusting shadows /highlights. which I have;nt really got in Paint Shop Pro.
Its quick and easy.(and cheap!!!!)
Cheers
John

An interesting corvid - none of ours have such a pale beak. I agree that the initial post is too light: the repost is better but I think it can still go darker to look more natural. Part of the problem may be that the imafge is simply too flat, as if the original was quite contrasty and the processing has tried to over corrrect that.

Thanks. Here's a darker one  but  blacks  loosing detail. Does look more natural I suppose..Trouble is, on my monitor  a couple of inches  of head position  changes everything.

Thanks for   your interest.
Cheers
JohnR
PS-Rooks are the only ones here with the bald head area.

Nice Rook, John ! We have them not around where I live, but in the eastern part of The Netherlands. Just came to think of it, I do not have a single shot.. Yours is great, although the green in the BG looks a little strange on my screen (oversaturated maybe?) ?The last repost looks fine to me as far as the blacks are concerned, the green stays a little weird, but it may be my monitor ? Cheers, Hans

Third image looks the best.  I agree with Hans that the green saturation of the grass  could be dialed back a little.  My guess is this is the size of a crow.  We don't have these in North America.  I had to look it up in my Collins guide to get a better idea.  You did a really good job with the dark feathers.

Nice, John.  I also like the third version.  There tends to be a lot of push to make sure there's always detail in the blacks on dark birds and that's not the way they are in nature, so they end up looking gray instead of black.  Your final version looks great.  As for the greens-our very wet spring has produced areas that look just about like that, so I won't venture to say whether or not they're oversaturated.

I, too, prefer the third version, and to me it seems that the detail looks fine.  In fact, I just looked at it again and it really looks nice, with great detail.

Thanks all for  taking an interest. Appreciate it.
The green is moss on  a stoney bank. I can tone it down no problem.
Will do later.
Cheers
JohnR