Pied-billed Grebe

This little guy stopped bathing long enough to pose.

Good subject, good composition. Cute critter! But the image seems a little dull. I sharpened it, enhanced the catchlight in the eye, and set the color space to sRGB (so important!).

Did the lightening of the neck result from the color space change? How do you do that?

The bolder colors come from the high pass sharpening method I used. Because sharpening was done in a layer, I could easily use a layer mask to restrict it to just the duck, and not enhance the color noise seen in the water.

The sRGB color space just makes what's seen on the browser closer to what's seen in the photo editing tool.

The catchlight was done by using the pencil tool to lighten the three pixels that were already lighter than black.

Thanks for the info, Michael. I've bookmarked the sharpening topic!

These were all over the place in Monte Vista early in December. From a distance they were obvious because they're diving birds and they would disappear from sight.