Well im going to go against the grain of everybody else. I actually like both renditions for different reasons, your stars in the first one seem to pop a bit nicer after all this area is very dense with stars. and i like the nebulosity in the second rendiition. Have you tried combining the two? aka layer mask hide all then use a brush to selectively brush in the nebulosity? that way you get the tight crisp stars your looking for coupled with the smooth soft nebulosity. and if some of the bigger stars start to blow out use the same method for them.! a bit of deconvolution and enlargement of the native image size sometihng like 1.5x to 2x though iterations though photoshop and youll have yourself a nice image... that will stand up to large format printing.
just my 2c worth
