I think will discover, as might already have, working in a canned program, will effect all the areas equal for a given spectrum. Where as working layers, and dodging and burning will give rise to selected areas. I.E. the eyes in the darkest (black holes) what I did were cut and pasted for your original copy and then treated separately in last layer. I should have perhaps worked them a little different, but I wanted to get it up.

This thread should have been in the http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/s-116-1.html section.

Good news, you have all you need! Only practice is required. You can get as good at it as you'd like. I'm attaching a quickie done in NIK Silver Efex, just to give you a rough idea. This is rather tame version, you can take it as far as you'd like. Here's the quickie recipe for what I did here: Pick a preset on the left that looks like a good starting place, not too extreme (I used Push Process), then go to the right and tune it with control points or the brush, to get shadows, highlights where you want, and work with contrast and clarity to bring out detail and begin "grunging" it a bit. Then pick a film effect that accentuates what you are trying to do, and work with the color sliders in the films. Go back up top and do anything else you need to do globally or with control points to shape it up further. Some will benefit from the colored filter buttons, but I tried them on this one but didn't use them. Then go into your toning buttons and tinker till you find any toning you might want. This is just the default, ramped up a bit. 15 more minutes of work would yield a better product, and the more you pay attention to detail the better it would get, but only you know how much time you're willing to invest. (For instance, this one needs some different or more adjustment to the lighter areas on his nose and cheeks and some attention to the background among other things). Some pros and dedicated amateurs spend hours on one image.