The contrast in the very first image is minimum, not maximum. At least, that's what it looks like to me. Nothing is anything but the same grey, just different colours of the same grey level, which is minimal contrast.

Of the last two I also prefer the second one. I would leave the light setting at maximum and slide the saturation up just the tiniest amount more impact with the colour, and try again for better contrast. Its so very difficult trying to explain what I mean, so I hope you don't mind but I have messed with the settings on a mini version of that last image you uploaded to show you what I mean by contrast and saturation. This may be a bit too much by your standards, but I all I did was hit the autoequalize button in Corel (something I've never seen in any other piece of software).

pashaila_shadowex.jpg