Well I try my best to start with bright crisp images!! Good glass, good light and knowing how to shoot a near-perfect exposure in different conditions is really the most help. If it's not good straight out of the camera no post processing in the world will make it great :) So that is the first step. Get it right in camera. Get good light, use good quality glass, know what aperture and shutter speed you need to get the proper exposure.

My post-processing on the majority of my photos is incredibly simple. I make my adjustments in the RAW window first, tweaking exposure, recovery, etc. Then in Photoshop I use levels, a screen layer majorly reduced, a curves layer set to luminosity mode to add more depth to my tones, and burn the edges slightly to give a very non-obvious vignette towards the center. I obviously play with other things sometimes like different color balances etc depending on the finished product I want but that is basically it!