Photo comments

As some (many?) of us who are lurkers and new to digital photography, I
would very much appreciate any comments the more experienced and regular
posters could add describing any post editing alterations they make to
the original image before they post them here.
I am playing with brightness, contrast and histograms, and am interested
in what you are looking to change and why.
For example, what exactly does sharpening do to improve an image?