Addendum re: brightness and photos

I thought I would post a photo, before and after, to illustrate what I was talking about in the previous post. First is the original of this raven landing on a branch, and next is the one I bleached out a bit by using "brightness/contrast" in Photoshop Elements.

Note the difference in the shadow on the bird's face--there is virtually no detail in the original, but in the washed-out version, you can see the eye and the details of the beak and also the body feathers. In the second one you can also clearly see all the definition of the wing feathers and differentiate the feet from the edge of the wing.

By the way, I found this photo here, just to give proper credit. Thanks to whoever took it!