Heed the advice of others related to stretching data. Helps to research what your are shooting too - 'know thy subject'. There is nothing wrong with pitch black shadows if there is indeed no information to show but often such contrast doesn't work against strong mid tones and highlights. Too much for the eye to comprehend.
Get rid of the white borders on the pbase images. They do nothing for your images. For web display, if you want to use borders, make them black or dark grey. Disregard the above for a monochrome fine arts project, then eek every pixel for detail and present with a white border as it visually emphasise the detail. An example of this is the work I produced with Chris Soos a few years ago on a ten panel mosaic of the horse head region using a 24" RC-
http://cs.astronomy.com/cfs-file.ash...Chris-Soos.jpg
An extreme example, but give you an idea. White borders and colour images certainly don't match. Anyway, keep them coming. Good to see the great progress you are making.