The original picture
There's no single combination of settings that will produce perfectly touched-up photos, any more than there is a single set of settings for your camera that will take perfect pictures every time. Thus, it's more helpful if you familiarize yourself with the tools available to you, then "tweak" each picture individually until it looks the way you want.
This photograph was taken indoors, with low, warm lighting. My flash picked up my daughter in the foreground just fine, but it could use some improvement.
Color photographs are made up of varying degrees of six different colors: cyan, magenta, yellow, red, green, and blue. By varying the amount of each color in an image, you can help make it look more balanced. I think my original image is too red, as evidenced by the fact that my blonde looks like a red-head. The color balance tool makes adjusting the color levels quick and 3 simple. Just click Adjust>Color Balance>Color Balance to launch the dialog box.
You can use the slide control to find a balance between two different colors (such as cyan or red), or you can type numbers into the color levels boxes. Either way, the preview window will show you what your image would look like if you applied the changes. By favoring the cyan and yellow over the red and blue, I was able to generate a picture that I think is more even and whose colors are actually truer.
Another way to modify the color values in a picture is by use of the Hue/Saturation/Lightness tool. You can launch the dialog box for it by clicking Adjust>Hue and Saturation>Hue/Saturation/Lightness.
Hue is the actual color value (red, blue, green, etc.). Saturation is the amount of color. Lightness is the shade of color. By making minor adjustments to these properties of color, you can have a big impact on your photographs.
Pull up some of the pictures you have that don't have what you think is the right color balance, or whose color values could use some work. Use the Color Balance and Hue/Saturation/Lightness tools to make corrections and adjustments.
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