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Wildlife Moderator
Hi Eash, I quite like the composition and placing the subject to the left, looking in to the right works.
I would look to loosing a lot of the FG and the two rocks are a little distracting I feel and can be removed very easily, however... The two main issues for me is the overall colour, it's just too saturated, but it's the critical sharpness that is not there. At 1/2000 SS the image will be sharp, so have you applied any sharpening to the image, if so how much? I hope it is just a simple thing as sharpening and not camera shake. 
Steve
Post Production: It’s ALL about what you do with the tools and not, which brand of tool you use.

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Agree with Steve's points. Is this a large crop?
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BPN Viewer
I like the pose and the comp (nice low angle). A combination of the two posts with a little reduction in the color of the OP and some NR on the repost might work well. Keep the sharpening mostly on the tiger, not on the surroundings.
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Wildlife Moderator
Eash, just checked and your image has an untagged profile, I suggest you have a quick read of the Sticky at the top of the Wildlife section, Saving for web, this should help in part.
If you are using PS then you initially need to apply sharpening at the RAW stage. You need to apply sharpening by moving the Amount slider, rarely the radius, but Detail & Masking., will also need to be adjusted. Amounts are personal, but all need to be balanced, but Detail & Masking are hard to explain how to set these sadly. Once you have finalised your file this is your Master, from this you will ALWAYS crop for each different output. Once you have cropped to the final size of output ie 1024 x 724 you will need to apply more sharpening, but this is at a much lower scale.
Post Production: It’s ALL about what you do with the tools and not, which brand of tool you use.

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BPN Member
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Here is my procedure to selectively sharpen once you have resized for the web. I flatten the image, then duplicate the layer. I choose Unsharp Mask and apply my choices to entire image, only looking at the effect on the main subject. Then I add a layer mask (that square symbol with the hole in the center at the bottom of the layers pallet). I fill the mask with black (Edit, fill with black). The black blocks the sharpening. Then with a soft white brush (set foreground to white) I brush over the main subject to reveal the sharpening. White reveals. If you make a mistake painting, reset foreground color to black and paint away the mistake. Reset foreground color to white and continue revealing the subject. Hope this helps.
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BPN Member
Eash, though this was certainly a thrilling sighting it seems the image you are showing here won't be a keeper - it just isn't sharp.
I think it's probably because of heat haze. You explain in the OP you were shooting in 40 degree heat - here in Africa even in DRY climates (desert) you pick up immense heat shimmer which affects AF and sharpness when the temperature rises above 30 degrees celcius. The further you are from your subject, the worse the effect on your image quality...
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Wildlife Moderator
Perhaps Eash you might like to try this which may get you up and running quicker, but it's not anything I used, but Nancy's suggestion is worth exploring too.
http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ions-(for-free!)
Post Production: It’s ALL about what you do with the tools and not, which brand of tool you use.
