I have no time now but I will right some lines about the other images. For now only I address Edwin.
Yesterday and before dressing my pajama I saw the idea of Ashwin and I could remember that I should have told you that you could use the blending modes to get a better picture.
I thought that in the morning I would write you about this.
And here I am.
What have I done ?
1. Saved your image in tif
2. Opened your image in CS5 as smart object (OK no reason for that, just a mania)
3. Duplicate layer and change the blending mode to what you can see in the picture herewith for future adjustments of opacity and fill.
4. Then I adjusted the brightness and the contrast as you can see herewith
However, I used the button to get this adjustment only at the layer bellow.
5. Saved the image as tif and imported it in LR
6. New adjustments in sharpness, graduated filter, as you can see herewith again
and here is the final image. I re-cropped by the way at 3/5
What do you think ?