PP Practice

[Onerider]

I have been trying to get a better handle on post processing. I am using LR4 and occasionally PSE10. I really don't have a good handle on what all I can do in PSE10 yet to improve a shot though.
It seems like there is always something missing and I can't put my finger on it. There just isn't any pop in them. These two shots are some of the ones I have been practicing on. I think I have tried everything I can think of but it's just not there. I realize these aren't really good, but I figured practice is practice and I'm not trying to make a silk purse out of a sows ear.
I would appreciate any pointers to try and if you feel like it, do your own rendition and tell me what you did so I have an idea which direction to go. I know being a JPG may be limiting as to what can be done. I'm working in raw with them. The shot was taken at 1/640@6.3-ISO 100.

Thanks

Before


Afer

 

[Rick58]

Looks good to me

 

[bc_steve]

not sure if you are going to get that much more pop in PP without it looking unrealistic.

if you could go back to that moment when you took the picture I think you could make the flower stand out more by using a wider aperture.

 

[Onerider]

Thanks for the replies. I can reshoot it when the weather clears. I'll drop the aperture some and see what happens. I was more concerned with figuring out if I was over doing it or missing something I could do because I felt it was missing something.