Any suggestion for ACR and color space

I have been shooting JPG for about a year or ever since I got my D50. Little by little my pics have improved and even though I don't post very much I am pretty much here at the cafe daily for a couple of hours at least. I have had CS2 for some time and just last night, I updated my ACR plugin so that it would recognize my NEF files.
I have just decided that since so many are shooting raw then maybe I should give it a try. I took some pics around the house and I really like the flexibility that I can get with a raw file. I also like that the NEF file will remain unchanged regardless of what I do with it. I would like to see if I can get some advice from people who are using ACR. Since I had no idea on how to use it, I kind of just messed around with it. Here is what I have done to edit a couple of pics.

1. Open file with ACR
2. Adjusted WB, Exposure, brightness and contrast if necessary
3. Saved as TIFF
4. Open TIFF in CS2 and just sharpened a bit
5. Saved as JPG and thats it.

So each for each NEF file I also have a .xmp file, TIFF, and JPEG (glad HDD's are cheap). Here is a few things I am not sure about: 8-bit file, 16-bit file, AdobeRGB (1998), sharpening by default is set to 25, eveytime I open a file I get an flashing exclamation mark that goes away. I pretty sure I can think of more, but I have probably already bored most of you.

If anyone has a simple workflow that I could mess around with since I am pretty new at raw, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

Thanks goofball. Yeah a couple of times I found myself in CS2 making additional adjustments since I felt the pic needed it. Hopefully I will get some more feedback.:biggrin:

 

Thanks for the advice. I see what you mean about skipping the TIFF part. I visited your site and read your profile. I just graduated from CSUF this past December with a BA in mathematics but will walk in a few weeks. Thanks

Eddie