How to take good quality pictures?

Hi. I have owned a Nikon d3000 for three months now and i still have troubling figuring out why the pictures don't look crips and thick.

they look like the pictures i can take with a digital camera.

My friend has the same camera but the pictures end up looking very thick and vibrant.
She said something about "manual setting" what does that mean?

Do you need a certain flash that you have to attach to the camera?
Mine come out looking normal.

Owning a good camera doesn't make you a good photographer.

She is probably referring to shooting in manual mode, like an old fashioned film SLR, where you set the aperture and shutter speed. That way you have more control over the image. If you don't know how to do that, check YouTube for tutorials.

The next thing is the editing. All of the impressive, professional photos you see have likely had a lot of tweaking done in Photoshop. If you don't want to drop $700 or whatever it is now for Photoshop, Gimp is a powerful, free editor. The first thing you will want to learn how to use is the curves tool since you will use it on literally every photo (again, youtube tutorials are the best way). You can use the curves tool to boost the contrast, which will make your photos look more vibrant. If the curves adjustment isn't enough, you can also increase the saturation.

I hope that gets you going in the right direction.