sometimes you can experience a phenomenon called freckle in certain super alloys which is associated with a segregation effect of alloying elements. This can be confirmed by carrying out microanalysis across these regions looking for compositional differences. Sometime etching using other reagents will either not enhance it or enhance it futher
Flakes are at preferred orientation and spherical carbides (M6C/M23C6? possibly)are random. History of the sample is important to know for orientations of flakes is one direction. You need to characterize the precipitates/flakes using electron microscopy/XRD for required information on precipitates. You can get a number of literatures on HA 188.