Yeah, telling us the camera model would help a ton to give you specific direction. But in general...
First off, use Manual settings and learn to use your camera ASAP.
ISO
This is important to understand, luckily there isn't much to it. ISO simulates more light in the image (it gives it a higher exposure). The lower the ISO setting the better the picture quality will be (set it to like 100). The higher the ISO is the more "noise" or "grain" will appear in the picture. Low ISO also usually means you'll be shooting at a slow shutter speed, which is fine, use a tripod and the camera's timer function.
Use decent lighting
If you don't have enough light you'll have to resort to raising the ISO to get brighter shots or using really slow shutter speeds, both of which will lead to the ugly "noise". It's best to start off with good lighting in the first place. Surround the scene with white paper or cloth to bounce light around, or do whatever you feel works for the shot you're trying to take.
Not using enough light will dull your colors.
Saturation/Vibrance
For more color, check your camera and see if it has the option to saturate the pictures more. Look for something like "Vivid Color" or something. You can also easily bring out the colors more in Photoshop by using the Vibrance/Saturation tool. Vibrance adds color more subtly I think, play around with it.
Ugly yellow/blue/whatever tinge
Some lights give pictures a certain tinge, you can fix that in Photoshop usually by just using Auto Color or Auto Tone. Sometimes you have to manually fix the picture by using something like the Selective Color tool. Sometimes the camera will have options to fix it itself.
Brightness/Contrast
-Don't adjust Brightness/Contrast, you'll tend to get an unnatural result if you're just starting to adjust pictures. Use the Levels tool instead. (Image > Adjustments > Levels) The White slider affects bright areas, the Grey midtones, the Black dark areas. Play around with it to get a feel for what it adjusts, it gives you much more natural results than Brightness/Contrast (nothing wrong with B/C if you want to use that though).
Bad contrast will also dull your colors.
It's best to take a nice picture to begin with because if all your pictures are bad you're going to have to correct every one of them, and that gets time consuming (unless you run a script of course). Usually all I have to do with my pictures is darken them a little and get rid of blue or green tinge because of the lights I use.
Edited by DrNightmare, 28 August 2012 - 02:26 PM.
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Hope to see more Farmer Wilf stories in this side of EB! 
