I admire photographers who can get the image they want straight out of camera (SOOC). Not needing to rely on photo editing software shows you've mastered the camera. Ken Rockwell echoes the same sentiment: Who has time to muck around in RAW?.

Don't like the images coming out of your camera? It's probably your camera's settings to blame. I used to have a camera that produced grainy, dull images. one day, I tweaked the settings, and everything came to life. All I did was turn up the noise reduction and colours and darken the shadows. This puts more emphasis on the primary subject.

Look up the topic of subtractive composition. James Popsys advocates for this, removing distracting elements from the frame (either in-camera by moving your feet, changing angle, or zooming, or in post-production by cropping/cloning) to strengthen the core subject and message of the image.