Mandarin Close Up

[Space Face]

Nice close up - looks a bit dark though? Perhaps a touch more brightness to the photo as a whole and you could consider opening a hue and saturation adjustment and lowering the saturation in the cyan colour channel just a bit (you might want to use a layer mask to select the white area so that you don't lose the blues in the blue colouring on the bird)

Yeah, I kinda agree. It was taken in shade so is near how it looked in life. I did brighten it in PP just before I posted but didn't like the result so posted the original. I might have another stab tho. Thanks for the input. Appreciated.

Would be interested in seeing this pic with the whites raised 'a little' to liven the colors a little and a 'small increase' in the temp. If you do, (and I'm sure you already know this) careful raising the whites too much and causing noise. That often seems to be the trade off when increasing the light in a dark pic.
All in all though, I like the pic, it looks like a beautiful mandarin duck in the shade.

Cheers K.