Not quite the perfect picture?

Your excited you've been out for hours with your camera and you believe you have the most amazing photo you have ever taken, you get home, insert SD card and in actual fact that photo is a little bland!
Spice it up and add a few filters, there you go, the brilliant vintage style is always a good shot.
Here's how:
This is the photo i'm using, taken by myself a few years ago. (as you can see it's nothing spectacular)

The main aim of this photo was to make out she was an 80's superstar if you like.
We need to bring up the colors!
First thing about photoshop is always use layers!
Each time you add something to a photo put it on a new layer, that way if you make a mistake you can always delete it.
First thing I am going to do is go to Image>Adjustments> levels
this will show up a histogram.

if you drag the black arrow it will increase the darkness of the photo and if you drag the white arrow it will increase the brightness.
I want this more vivid so I am going to drag the white arrow to around 200.

the photo is now brighter!
however it still doesn't look right.
So I am going to go back to Image>Adjustments>Hue & Saturation

I have dragged the hue to -22 to give it more color and definitely more appeal.
(you can adjust the saturation is you want a little less color)
Almost there!
The key to mos vintage style photographs is filters!
add a new layer (that's the icon next to the little bin on the  bottom of the layers box)
double click this layer and rename it filter (this will help you to remember what you put in here)
Find a texture that you like (google images has a lot) and just copy that into your photo!
This is the texture I used:

You can download this texture here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/borealnz/3495540187/
paste the texture onto your new layer and stretch it out so it covers your photo completely

now that doesn't look right, so where it says "normal" under the layers header change the format to "overlay" and then bring the opacity down to around 55%
AND THERE YOU HAVE IT!
A beautiful modern yet so vintage looking photo!