Frustrated with images, could use some help

Original

taramcg wrote:
Holy moley, what a difference that makes. Thank you, thank you, thank cosworth! I am going to check out that link stlscape. Wow! This place rocks. I am really grateful for your help.

You are very welcome! Once I understood contrast and sharpening better this little workflow transfomed my shots. One last tip:

If you plan to resize, do so before the aforementioned USM settings and select Bicubic resize only. Not Bicubic Sharper etc., just bicubic.

Let's see your results now....

Here my try at it:
http://i23.photobucket​.com …N%20uploads/032​3061PS.jpg

http://i23.photobucket​.com …N%20uploads/032​3067PS.jpg

Here is my version using the more aggressive sharpening. Do they look better? I sharpened and uploaded before seeing the post about sharpening after resizing. Will these print out nicely too or is there a different set of numbers I should use for prints? Thank you again. This is a huge eye opener for me. I am amazed by how well the contrast comes together too. This is way better than what I was doing before. I am very grateful.