Editing Then and Now, Plus Flower Challenge

I was scouring some photos for the most recent Paper Mama Challenge and decided to try my hand at re-editing a photo I took in March. I liked the results and so thought I would share with you dear friends.
I have always stuck to the analogy that in photo editing, less is more, and the best thing to do is get the greatest shot as possible SOOC (straight out of the camera). Photoshop is a beautiful thing, but its also a lot of responsibility. When we first get our hands on it, we tend to go overboard - heavy vignettes, over saturation, oompa loompa babies. the works! As time passes, we train our eyes, and our editing style will change (we all hope!).
So as an example, here is a photo I took in March, my original edit back then, and my new edit now

Original:

SS: 1/125, Ap: f/2.8, ISO 200, 50mm
Now I blew the highlights in this, big time. The flower is practically 3D, the reds are so clipped. Notice the hotspots on her hands and pants. Its also really cool.

Back in March, this is all I did:

basically I cropped and probably brightened the midtones a bit (which it totally doesn't need)

And this is the edit I just did:

 I was able to tone down the highlights, and play more with the individual colour channels (red, green, blue) to get the ground and her skin to a more natural colour, plus tone down the flower some. It is still clipped, and ideally I would like to recover it even more, but my masking/layering skillz are so not ready for that.

Back in March, you can see what two editing gurus were able to do with a few other shots from this same session here. I am not there yet, but I feel like I am getting closer. Baby steps, baby steps.

Hope that was helpful for some. With all that said, I am also entering the last photo in Paper Mama's current challenge, which is Flower. Check it out here for other "sweet" shots: