[Arkady]

Use Adobe Bridge to select the image(s) you want then double click to open. You then get a RAW interface with loads of options.
You can alter the white balance (very useful - either by the camera pre-sets or by moving a slider back and forth - the image gets warmer or colder), exposure, hue/tint, curves - pretty much anything you want.
Once you're satisfied, click open and the image now opens into Photoshop. You can now do any other editing - layers etc before you save. I always save as a TIFF - every time you open and re-save a JPEG it loses some information, which is a BAD THING. Save the image as an uncompressed TIFF and then save it again as a JPEG for web use, re-sizing it accordingly.

I use seperate folders for RAW Images, TIFFs and JPEGs - RAW, Best and Transmission accordingly.

When you go to the next RAW image you can apply all the previous image's corrections automatically by selecting 'apply previous' in the drop-down menu.
You can even apply those values to a whole batch of images if they were all shot with the same exposure under the same conditions. Useful for studio work, but less applicable to photojournalism.

The best thing is if you bollox it all up, the original RAW file remains untouched so you can always go back to the start and try again.