S&E: 3 (PS)

Yikes, I'm having a hard time this week pulling myself out of the winter blahs.  I come home and just want to go to bed.  Perhaps this week's prompt was too tempting...

Here was my SOOC for the week:  Good Night

SOOC

With edits

Playing with actions (Vintage - I'm not sure where I grabbed it from, I'm sorry!)

SOOC

With edits - maybe too bright?

With an action called Rosy B&W - I don't know where I got it, it might be part of my PS

So, I'm digging the actions, but I'm having some trouble.  Here are my current dilemmas:

1.  How do you decide what edits to make to a photo and which direction to go?  There are so many options, and I want to do them all.

2.  How do you organize your work flow?  I'm trying out Lightroom and storing my photos there.  I do some minor edits and then export them.  Then I open them in Photoshop, and make more edits.  Then I save the file as a .jpg file to put on here.  Shew, its getting overwhelming.  Plus, what files should I keep, and what ones can I trash?   I need a better system.

3.  Is it possible to over-photoshop?  I'm finding that I like my SOOC shots, and I can't get my edits to retain some of the something that the original has.

Oooh, and I have my photo for Red already!

Edit:  I just realized I missed the first half of the tutorial on reducing noise.  I'll read up and try to figure all this out.  And I'm adding a fourth question...


4.  I can't open RAW images.  I'll have to track down a video...