A good way to correct underexposed images with photoshop is to use duplicate layers. Duplicate the background, then set the new layer blend mode to 'screen'. You may have to repeat this several times, duplicating the 'screened' layer depending on your image. To further explain, I borrowed your image, hope you don't mind. For this I had background > layer 1 (screen mode) > layer 2 (screen mode). This obviously saturated the background, so I merged the 2 screened layers, created a layer mask and used a brush to 'wipe away' the areas of the mask to allow the original background to show through. A little unsharp mask was added and finished off with raising the levels on the white area around the beak after first selecting it with the lasso. I've exagerated the colours, just for clarity. By using the layers you have pretty good control over all aspects of the final image. Dean