Brown Quail

[kevinj]

Taken at Oxley Creek, always good to see them after the floods.

[David_MC]

That is a neat bird. Nice shot.

[avkomp]

good sharp capture. looks a little trippy on my screen. was the original dark and had shadow lift or something?
trying to figure what I am seening is all

[kevinj]

My bad, battery saver is changing my screen brightness.

[Isac]

You've captured the fabulous marking on this one Kevin. I'm the same with avkomp the lighting seems off a bit, but lovely image anyway with good framing.

[kevinj]

I just realised the battery saver is on so my laptop screen is in power saving mode, DOH!!!!!!! I`ll redo it later.

[kevinj]

This is better I think?!! Brown Quail 2.0.

[Isac]

Much better. More contrast and colour. For your next exercise, have a go at dulling down the background to make the bird pop. I hope it's OK, here's an example:

[kevinj]

I`ll have a go but it`ll be trial and error, maybe need to look up some Tutorials. Really should try to learn bit about Photoshop.

[avkomp]

looks a lot better now. genuine critique is making a big difference around here now imho.

[Isac]

It's always trial and error Kevin. There's so many options that it can become overwhelming.
BUT learning the tools and techniques is the key to it all.
Here's a good starting point. I use this quite often just to make the subject pop. It's using the Tilt Shift blur filter for DOF effect.
PTC - Jesus Ramirez

The rest was just using Hue/Saturation adjustment layers, #1 on BG, #2 on FG.
For BG: Hue +10, Sat -40.
For FG: Hue +10, Sat +30 (clip H/S Layer 2 to the Foreground Layer - ALT + CTRL + G).
Here's my Workspace:

Have a play and see what you can come up with.
I'm always happy to help out with Photoshop or point you towards great tutorials so always ask

[AlfandBen]

Nicely caught shot.As Isac has said the the markings are beautiful. They almost appear to have a ripple effect. I'm not good at post either but assuming it is similar to our pheasants would probably have just de-saturated it a bit.