Since I have been getting a lots of emails for the toning method I have made up a standard answer for how I do it.
There is nothing much more to it, just paying attention to details and practice. After you do 20-30 of them you will know exactly what steps to take and in what order.

the way I do the toning:

Open your image
Do the usual Levels and color adjustments

1. On your keyboard hit: ALT- CTRL-SHIFT~ (the little wiggle thing above 1) all in the same time. This will select the lighter parts of your image.
2.Hit: CTRL-SHIFT-I to reverse the selection.
Here comes the good part:
3. Go to Layer-New Fill Layer-Solid color and select a color something like this: #353010 ( you can play with this later as well )
4. change the layer blend to multiply
You will notice quite a bit of change.
From here on you can play with this new color adjustment layer:
you can duplicate it ( the picture gets darker ) and set the duplicate layer blend mode to Linear or Color burn.
If your image is too dark, either lower the opacity of the solid color layer or make it lighter by using Levels or Curves or Shadow/Highlight Filter.
You can have some real nice effect.
One more thing I want to mention: do some selective blurring, sharpening dodging and burning of your image.
Generally speaking blur,burn and desaturate areas that you do not want to draw attention to and do the opposite with the parts of the image that you want to do some emphasizing.
You can do a great deal with dodging and burning.
for example:
select the dodging tool, select highlights in the dropdown menu on the top and start working on the eyes. Than select the burning tool and select shadows in the dropdown menu and start working on the lips and the different areas of the face where there are a lots of lines, like around the eyes, etc. You going to be surprised what a difference it makes.
Now when you want paint a color over your image , get a new empty layer, not a duplicate of your image.
Change the blend mode to overlay or multiply adjust the opacity of the layer ( you can keep adjusting it till you like the way it looks) and start painting over with a color that you like.
It takes a bit of practice, but it really works great.
One more trick:
sometimes I add "render lighting effects" so I can focus on the part of the face that really matters. If you add too much you can always go to "Edit" fade lighting effects.

Hope it helps

I have put the first few steps into action:

http://kentdesign1.com/images/Lazlo_toning.atn

Lazlo

BTW, I learned a lot from this guy:
http://www.davrodigital.co.uk/

He has got some fantastic , easy to follow and to the point practical PS tutorials .