While my goal is to always get photos right in camera rather than relying on photo editing skills to save the day... I am a firm believer that editing skills are very important to taking your work to another level.
Here's a couple of before and after examples from yesterday's senior session....
BEFORE:
AFTER:
BEFORE: 
AFTER:
Mostly I use some Photoshop actions that I've managed to acquire through the years for my basic workflow.
I typically whiten a persons eyes/teeth, smooth out a persons skin (it's easy to overdo this part!), and boost the color.
For these I also dodged the white background to make it go completely white and I adjusted the hue saturation to slightly modify the color of Stephanie's hoodie. Oh, and I sharpened them a bit (I'm learning how necessary this is for digital pictures!) and I cropped.
I think the effort was well worth it!!!
