PP steps of your macro pics?

ananthtm

Macro experts, could you please share your macro post-processing steps?
And I don't mean focus-stacking.

(1) Apart from focus-stacking, what other pp steps do you do, in order to make your pics pop-out?
(2) Do you use RAW or Jpeg?

I am not an expert on pp and have come to realization my pp skills are direly lacking and it shows in my pic.
Case in point below, my decent pic below became "ugh" due to bad pp:

Lord Vetinari

The only poor thing in the above shot is the manual ? noise reduction on the background.
My work flow is outlined here http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showpost.php?p=9416067&postcount=5

Brian V.

GOLDENORFE

yes always shoot raw. most of the time i dont have to adjust much, usually only exposure and white ballance for flash shots.
i convert in lightroom, adjust exposure if nec, sometimes use "clarity" slider if shots where taken with 450d [ not necc with 5d2 shots ]
sharpen at about 30-40 and quite often use the recovery slider after adjusting exposure.
on exporting to photoshop usually use "noise ninja" at default level if needed [ 450d only ] just check/adjust levels and any layer masks for manual stacking.
save as full size jpg, then resize to 190 pix inch and 9cm height for web, and then high pass sharpening as needed.

if your flash /diffusion is working good, the resulting exposure should be fairly good and therefor not much post needed.


phil