>>3687423No problemo, I was where you were not to long ago and I'm still not the best at it. Your other photo was not bad at all some people like that flat aesthetic. You can do most of the editing with the curves tool. If you don't want it move the points in each color channel to just before they clip in the histogram. I've done it in the orange circles and adding more to create an "S" will add more contrast.
Silverfast is a scanning program and it has some good film color correction built in. You can get a free license with your scanner serial number on their website. I prefer using vuescan and inverting myself but if I'm feeling lazy I'll use silverfast.