Here is a before and after example:
Original Edited

I usually use Lightroom to just do basic editing (color correction, crop/rotate, maybe some slight hue/saturation/lightness corrections).  I then create a duplicate in PSD format and continue editing in Photoshop.

In Photoshop, I created a new layer by holding down the ALT key and clicking the 'new layer' icon.  This gives you options when creating the new layer.  I chose a blend mode of 'overlay', and checked the 'fill with neutral color' checkbox.  This creats a grey layer over the base layer.  I then set default colors (d), and chose the brush tool (b).  I set the brush to a soft brush with opacity of about 10%, then painted either white or black on the new layer.  This has the same effect as dodge (black) and burn (white), but is non destructive to the image.  And if you don't like it, just delete the layer and start over.

In this image, I painted white in the lower left corner to brighten the grass, and some in the water.  I painted black on half dome, the sky, the distant trees, and a bit in the lower right water.

After this I created a curve adjustment layer.  I selected one point around middle grey and increased it 5 points.  Then, another point around 50 and decreased it 5 points.  This helped the colors pop.

That's all I did for this image.  Some pretty simple steps to really increase the image without making it look too over-done.

Since Halloween is coming up, I thought it appropriate to show you the ghosts I saw.

Here's a nice surreal snap of the underside of a pier.

Industrial shots are exceptionally suited to B&W... in my opinion.
Metal 1
Metal 2
Metal 3

I just bought a Nikon D70, and over the last weekend went to Vasquez Rocks north of Los Angeles. I took all of these pictures in some form of auto mode. Overall I guess I'm pleased. These have been worked in PS.

Flower - I had to do a lot of color correction on this one because the original had a pretty obvious green color cast. Not sure if that's due to the fact that the flower was in dark shade, or that I shot it in Macro mode which according to the manual boosts greens and reds.

Vasquez Rocks - Here's a nice view out of the middle of Vasquez Rocks towards the 14 highway shot in fully auto mode. Used unsharpen mask(USM).

Pine Branch - This was shot in Macro mode as well. No editing was done on this image.

Portrait - Shot this in Portrait mode. I think it did a pretty good job since it was taken high noon in direct sunlight. No editing was done on this image.

Panoramic - I also tried a panoramic. There are 6 images, untouched from the camera, and stitched together using Panorama Tools and PTGui(trial version). I think it did fairly good job of stitching it together, but the sky was a little jacked up since I didn't expose all 6 pictures at the same value (my bad). I ended up retouching the sky in PS, and sharpening it as well.