Ok guys, I don't know who should I answer to, so that is for everyone :)

First of all, to create a good photo first you have to shoot a good photo. Once you have it you may do a couple of things with that, it all depends on your idea, however the most important thing about the technique one may posses is the ability to see what is wrong with the photo you already have. And how it differs from what you want to present. It takes me usually the most of my time to think where I really want to go with the particular work. This all cannot be shown in a forum post, believe me :)

The only known to me method of learning is looking at the photos you are amazed with. You have to look VERY carefully, until you realize what makes them so amazing. You must know it exactly and specificly. Once you realize that, you can say that you have learned something. The second step is to find out how to achieve that. This is another art.

There are many easy "tricks" and many exhausting hand-made simple methods. Someone has shown a trick of "painting" on an additional gray layer. I used to try that, and it is not bad when you want to hide that it has been edited. However I'm not interested in hiding my influence on my work, so I do not use this method. And so on and so on.. :)

Anyway, if you think I could be useful, I believe someone could arrange some workshop where I could show some of that (if there will be interest in that, obviously). There is enough many apects to talk about at many workshops. And I believe one may spend fruitfully tens of hours on discussions on several aspects of particular effects one may use.