Sometimes it's only as good as the picture!

About 4 years ago my husband and I went to the Caribbean and he managed to take a couple of pictures of a hummingbird in a tree.  However, the lighting wasn't good and it was nigh impossible to get a picture of the little bird when he wasn't moving.  I looked through these pictures recently hoping that I might find one that I could resurrect especially as I have learnt a lot in the past 4 years.

Unfortunately, the bird displayed some purple fringing and chromatic aberration which was emphasized when I tried to lightening the bird or change the overall lighting.  I applied a texture to the end result to add some interest but mostly to mask the poor quality.  It looks fine from a distance but close-up you can see it's not really good enough.  Sometimes you just have to accept that the photo is not good enough in the first place.

The original:

The end result:

Having said that, 'revealing' a photograph can have surprising results.  On one trip to Langkawi island in Malaysia, we went on a nature walk in the evening with a guide to look at the unusual creatures in the forest.  There are flying squirrels and creatures called colugos.  We didn't get a really good look at one but my husband pointed his camera at the place in the tree where he knew the creature had landed hoping that the flash might yield a picture:

You could only see gleaming eyes but when we did an auto-contrast this is what we found!  It might not be a great picture but at least we got a look at this amazing flying animal.