I'm really starting to like adjustment layers. I used to make pretty much all adjustments w/out layers. Certainly not with adjustment layers (I'd use dup layers sometimes). But, while I haven't figured out all the possibilities by a long shot, I'm starting to feel that they do give me many more possibilities than doing without them. Pictures look a little more dramatic using them. Well, at least if you've seen the original for comparison like I have ;)

Here, I didn't bother to set my whitebalance (as usual) since I knew this would be a toned pic (or I would use whatever the white balance threw at me, which is what I ended up doing). I wanted to increase contrast, so I used a brightness/contrast adjustment layer with a non-normal blending mode (something color, can't remember and I already closed PS, sorry). Anyway, those are worth playing around with :)