After strolling right past our Land Rover, then mating with his lady friend, this majestic male enthroned himself on a large termite mound. A few minutes later the female killed a wildebeest, which he helped her devour. I think we should call him Riley – he got the life!

After some basic adjustments in Lightroom, I took this image into Viveza to try to enhance the the rich color contrast between the golden yellows of the lion and the deep blues of the background. While there, I lowered the structure of the background and then set a new control point to bring back  the structure in the lion’s face.

The color version edited in Nik Software’s Viveza.

I was still looking for something that would convey the majestic nature of of this regal beast. Ultimately I found what I was looking for using the “Film Noir 3” setting in Nik’s Silver Efex Pro .

For comparison, here is a jpeg of the original RAW file.

Here is a JPEG of the unedited RAW file.

So please let me know which version you like better.