Advise needed please

Ok I am still learning Photoshop, curves, levels etc. And I have seen quite an improvement on my once plain pictures. However I was wondering is there actually a sequence to follow when adjusting a picture? Or is it down to your own taste? or even the type of adjusting that needs to be done in a particular picture? Do you say do levels first? would you crop first or last? Hopefuly I have explained myself clearly, and if anyone could give me some guidelines to follow it would be great.

Most of the time I go like this (and this is a VERY general idea, not a true step by step, as every photo is different.)

Crop > Curves adjustment layer to correct colors and the like > Healing Brush to correct any blemishes if it's a portrait > Make a new layer on top, change to soft light blend mode > use new layer to burn and dodge with around 10-15% opacity on the brush to bring out eyes and other details > Flatten Image > Duplicate again > Apply High Pass Filter for sharpening (usually a 2 pixel radius is good) > Change high pass layer's blend mode to soft light > Flatten Again.

Done. Every image is different. This is what I usually do general portrait work, but some images will call for other kinds of treatment. It really depends on what's involved and what the image needs.

Sharpening is a critical step though. I ALWAYS save it for last. Everything else is pretty much up to you, imo.

For the web, do whatever makes you happy. But for prints, if you go too far, you'll find that there's a point where things don't look "right" anymore.

I shoot RAW, my order is exposure (including highlight recovery), color temp, brightness, contrast, fill light, then saturation. It takes about 5-10 seconds. If you're using photoshop proper a similar workflow would be levels (does exposure and brightness in one), filters for color, contrast, shadows and highlights (for fill light), saturation. That'd all be done on adjustment layers, and would take about a minute - six times longer than in RAW.

Three points:

1. Obviously the only step that is destructive is saving in a non-PSD format.

2. Do your exposure changes in your RAW converter, as it does the same job but with a easier interface and in terms that photographers are more familiar with.

2. As of CS3 (possibly CS2) the history is modifiable, which means you can change the order in which you have done your steps. You don't like the S-curve adjustment you can delete it. Use Adjustment layers and that makes your life easy, you can turn any adjustment on or off at any point simply by clicking on the 'eye' on the layer.