PHOTOSHOP
Adobe Photoshop is an amazing software primarily used in the industry to edit and manipulate photos. It is used very widely throughout the creative industry and is a key skill for those wanting to advance towards graphics, photography or design. There are many options available to help enhance your photos from something as simple as cropping or adjusting colours to removing backgrounds and creating new image elements. Photoshop is incredibly vast and with so many possibilities it would be hard to include them all, although starting with some basics you'll find it easier to research new techniques to continue your learning.
In the toolbar on the right of the window there is a huge range of tools for editing and creating within these layers. Some of these tools aren't immediately visible and can be accessed by right clicking on an icon which will reveal the other options. Some of them will be self-explanatory such as crop or brush, but it would be best to sit down and experiment with the tools you might not know how to use. I have included a playlist here which explains the tools in separate short videos.
Each tool when selected will change the bar at the top of the screen providing more detailed options, for example, the brush tool when selected will give options for size, colour opacity etc. The possibilities are endless.
Creating a new document
There are two ways to make a new document, if you're looking to work on a photograph for a quick edit then the easiest way is to drag your file to the photoshop icon and it should open. You can also set up a blank document through photoshop and place images into that, I would recommend this for a more complex edit involving multiple files or images.
Layers
Layers are a really useful feature in photoshop, you can add layers, change their transparencies, hide them, merge them and do all kinds of things to your original image without actually making any permanent changes to the original. This means that you can experiment with different options during an edit and it is all reversible. If you are working with many different images in one document they will all be added as separate layers and you can move and edit them individually.
Adjustment layers and filters
Image adjustments are a good place to start when you're trying to perk up a photograph, there are a few ways to access these options but the best place to start is the tab at the top named Image, you will find the options in the drop down under adjustments. Here you can play with the contrast, saturation, hue and colour balance. The first tutorial also shows in depth the curves adjustment, which could be all you need to make your image more punchy by adjusting it's values. You can correct the images tonal values by brightening, darkening and adding contrast.
You can use filters to blur, sharpen and add all sorts of effects to your image. Again the best way to work out how the adjustments and filters work is to experiment and see what effects you can make.
Exporting and saving your files
Whilst you are still working on a file the best way to save it is as a PSD document because it will not compress any layers you may want to continue with later. You can of course save it as a JPEG or a PNG and keep the PSD document, which I would advise anyway so if you spot any changes you can still make them in that file. The main differences between a JPEG and a PNG is that the latter is a file that will support a transparent background. Before saving or exporting you can hide or show any layers that you want or don't want visible in that particular file.