Lotus Processing

From this:

  To this: some difference, well at least I think so...

Here's what I did:

1. When opening the raw image in camera raw in PS I reduced clarity shown here 100% adjusted exposure value, brightness, contrast, blacks and saturation: (why saturation when I am converting to B&W, because I found the yellow, red, magenta's a little clipped....in highlights, and by doing that gave me a better overall histogram.

These small adjustments gave me an image that now looks like this, much softer and lower contrast due to the exposure and saturation adjustments:

2. Then I opened the adjusted image in Photoshop and began further adjustments making the B&W conversion using the adjustment B&W menu.

That adjustment gave me this image;

3. Which I then toned by using the tint dialog box checked in the B&W menu here: set hue to 42 and saturation to 3%

4. After that I made a new layer copy of the background image by dragging the original image into the duplicate layer icon in the layers window box;

5. Once I had the duplicate layer I made a levels adjustment to the black values to blacken the image, which gave me this histogram, notice the black value arrow's position along the histogram baseline.

The resulting adjustment looked like this: (OK  we are getting there)

6. Now I had the blacks where I wanted them I needed to put a mask on the layer by clicking on the mask icon in the layer box, so I could "paint" back in the brighter parts I wanted in the image, by using a soft brush in normal opacity somewhere between 3% and 30% depending on the amount of lightening I wanted (that's the subjective artistic part, how you see and use the brush tool impacting the image)

In order to paint out the levels adjustment selectively, click on the brush tool and make sure your foreground color is in black mode, then begin to paint out the black areas to expose the lighter areas under the levels mask, you will see on the mask where you have painted

7. When I  finished painting I flattened the image layers and made selective curves and levels adjustments in the image using the elliptical selection tool feathered at about 100% until I had made the adjustments I liked.
That's it!