If you edited the 1st pic it was only cropped&resized. A pic can start degrading because it gets compressed each time it's saved to JPEG format, I never edit a JPEG that's already been edited. Not relevent in this case but if you're going to open a JPEG to edit and want to save it to edit more later save it in TIFF format, it's uncompressed, they only drawback is a 4-5MB JPEG saved as a TIFF can be 30MB easily. Another variable is monitor output, most have too much blue. I didn't use any noise reduction, the wheels in the first pic were dark, read all my post, I cloned the wheels from a copy that had the shadows lightened, the helmet is lightened also and pushed the saturation and mid level contrast just a little on the door. There's a difference in the foreground dirt and the only editing it got was from the overall white balance. That's it.