Hi Ron,

Great bear capture, one I wish I had made myself.

Just my opinion, but image 1 and 2 are too flat for my taste. I agree that the dehaze tool on image 3 looks slightly over-processed.

I don't think you need to use the dehaze tool at all. IMO, all that is needed is a little tone adjustment, sharpening and some dodging and burning around the bear's face to add a little depth to the image.

The areas I would modify would be to reduce the bright area behind the bear and to the right of the it's head. I find the bright areas distracting. I would pull out some of the detail in the shadows under the bears head. Then I would apply a little overall sharpening, but concentrate on the bears eyes. I would consider a vignette to focus the viewer onto the bears face, which, after all, is the subject. Since it looks like the light is coming from the left, I would D&B to emphasize the facial shadows adding a little depth the face. I would finish up by slightly increasing global contrast until I was satisfied with the final result.

Here is an example where no dehaze was used. I generally don't use dehaze except for adding pop to white puffy clouds.

Mike