Workflow...

(POTDers...my photos are in the next post)
I've gotten a lot of comments on my color, so I thought I would post a bit about my work flow. For most pictures (at least the ones where I want to bring the colors out) I will make exposure and white balance adjustments to the RAW files in Lightroom and then I save the files as tifs. From there I run Leah Profancik's color pop action. While running this action I always use a soft white brush to brush back the skin and any whites that are losing detail or colors that are over-saturating at about 68% opacity. Then I continue the action and almost always turn on the curves layer and then reduce the cool layer to somewhere between 80%-90%. If I still want some more pop I'll run a soft light layer adjustment again brushing back the skin so it doesn't look too run/orange. On some photos that just need a little pop I will skip the color pop action and just do a soft light layer. If I do that I usually do a curves adjustment layer and bump up the mid tones a bit to brighten the skin and eyes. I am also a big fan of custom vignette's. I learned this fun one on a photography forum. Duplicate your layer, change the duplicate layer blend mode to "multiply" and then erase back whatever you want. Play with different opacity amounts at the edges so you don't have a hard line and also play with adjusting the opacity of the multiply layer.
I hope that helps someone out there with their color adjustments...

Oh, also, I have a ton of Lightroom Presets for color, but I don't like that they aren't as adjustable as the action (i.e. adjustment layers that you can brush back). Anyone else feel this way?