Digital BW, The Print

I'm a bw film photographer & need to learn how to print my scanned
negs digitally. In CS4, I've discovered that if I open my scanned
tiff's in Adobe Camera Raw, I can find pretty much all the adjustments
I need (mostly exposure & contrast) to keep my street look. I then
save the adjustments, open the file in Photoshop, probably apply a
gradient & then straight to print. It seems like I'm missing a world
of Photoshop possibilities, but if I tool around too much in PS, the
shots look too studied. Is anyone else using the simplified approach?
Comments appreciated.