New camera, could use some photography advice

[Nis01]

for some photos a good standby that i use is filter->sharpen->unsharp mask with:

amount - 25
radius - 50
threshold - 0

Thanks for the comments Scotty, I think I got a little crop happy when I tried editing these things so I might have to back off a little bit from that. These settings help pull some of the excess light off of a sunny photo or any photo in general? I really know nothing about photoshop except for being able to move sliders around for levels/contrast.

Also, do any of you know how to do the "edge burning" type look? I tried finding it and can't figure it out but I like the look for certain pictures.

Oh and Goodspeed, could you possibly explain how to layer things in photoshop like how you make those signatures for forums? Is it difficult?