[Forsh]

Generally, if you shoot in RAW you need to edit your images (If you use Jpeg you images get adjusted in camera depending on your settings), and I prefer to do the following:

*I Punch colors to give the images an epic movie feel (Edit: Photoshop CS2 has a new function called, Exposure, I used that near the end stages to help deepen the colors to my liking in this particular image.)
*I Dodge and Burn to pull the viewer's eye through an image
*I work in 16-bit to avoid color clipping and retain maximum tones
*I use contrast adjustment layers to balance out image contrast.
(Yes, I do prefer my images contrasty )
*I sharpen to output

Hope that helps.