Do not be afraid to manipulate your image. However, please keep in mind that anytime you make changes to your image, you should save the image to a different file name.  In doing so, you will not lose your original image.  Later, you may keep only the ones you want and delete the rest. 

If your image software do not have this feature, please don't bother.  I am sure that you should have some other tools that can give a stunning result if you just keep experimenting with them.

Warning, be sure to save your result while you are working on your image.  I recommend that you save your work every 15 minutes or so.  It is a common mistake to not save your image often enough.  You may lose hours of works with one computer crash.