Humpback baby Auto Tone version or my attempt?

No PS4 pro, clearly! So which do you prefer, the darker Auto Tone version or the lighter version. Have a lot of these very blue shots so other suggestions welcome.

Thanks

Have you tried converting to black and white? I general find they look better

B&W will be the fall back position for many shots and they do look "better" was just wondering if anyone had a magic fix.

I'd say somewhere in between would be best. But I think the real problem with shots like these is just uninteresting lighting. When shooting large animals I noticed I need lots of sun to make a great image or they just end up looking a bit bland no matter how cool the subject is.

I've had trouble even with reprocessing the image into monochrome: the background is just too dark and noisy, the highlights too bright.

I'm not sure if there's an answer to the original question.

Tim