"Succumbing to Nature" C&C

[KmH]

Photomatix is what made your first image so muddy.

You have to make 3 or more exposures in the camera. Making 3 exposures with editing software, will not work. What was the original file type before you converted it to a TIFF? JPEG? Or Raw?

If it was JPEG you were doomed from the getgo. Because JPEG is a lossy, compressed file type that has little, if any, editing headroom.
If it was a JPEG to start with, you edited the contrast/saturation, then edited some more by converting it to a TIFF, and then edited even more by pushing and pulling the exposure, before ever letting Photomatix do even more editing.

Where and what did you use to edit contrast and saturation?

I started, and did as much as possible, with your color photo in ACR (Camera Raw), because ACR edits parametically, and is non-destructive to pixels. Photomatix is not a parametric image editor. Photomatix destroys pixels. So, you need to make sure you have your ducks in a nice straight row before you try and use it.