Civil War edits

For this week's photography assignment, our instructor wanted us to use whatever photo editing program we have to make some edits to some photos. Currently, I have Photoshop Elements 6 which is an older version of this program. I am waiting for Lightroom 4 to arrive which should be an easier program for me to navigate through.

While we were at a Civil War reenactment over the weekend, I took quite a few pictures, but here are a couple of my favorites that I decided to play with for my assignment:

 Both of these photos are straight out of the camera. So after spending a little bit of time adjusting some settings in my elements program, here is the after:
 

So what set do you like best? Originals or edited?