The camera could be fabulous and the lighting devine, but the awful reality is unadjusted shots from your camera will never produce great prints.

The difference between before (top) and after (bottom) makes mouths fall open:

There are two reasons for washed-out prints:

1.  Your photo is in some other color space from sRGB, or:
2.  Your camera did not capture the vibrant colors or contrast you hoped. What to do?

Simple:

Try color effects, which can perk up washed-out photos.

Better:

Use the levels adjustment described in the too dark help section to make whites WHITE and blacks BLACK.

Even better:

Adjust the curves in  Photoshop.   (Go to the Image menu > Adjustments > Curves.)

You'll see a the curves dialog, right, but yours will have a straight line sloping at 45 degrees. The lower left point of the line represents black. The upper right represents white.

Three times along the line you'll see dotted lines crossing it. Click your mouse on each of those crossing points to create the three dots you see on the line at right.

Now click on the the lower of the three points you just made, hold your mouse down, and drag it downwards. Do the same for the upper of the three points you made, so that your line takes on an s-shape like you see at right.

If you have the preview button checked, you'll watch your photo gain dramatic contrast, like it did the flat shot of half-dome, below.

It made the shadows (lower left quadrant) darker and the highlights (upper right quadrant) brighter. Where the curve is steepened (the midtones) contrast is enhanced. Where the line is flattened, the contast reduces.

You can also grab the center point and raise it to make the overall exposure lighter, or drag it down to make it darker.

Be a mastah

To produce shots that drop jaws, master curves. They can be applied to regions of your photo, such as sky, or to color ranges, such as the green of foliage, and to a photo's individual "channels" — such as just its brightness.

A good place to start is the photography forum smugmug supports called Digital Grin, http://www.dgrin.com. The friendly and passionate people there live to try their hands at making shots pop, and they'll explain how they do it if you post a message with a sample photo.

Master this book and you'll enter the ranks of Photoshop curve mastah.