[eecks]

As a very amateur photographer, do you use lightroom on every photo? What sort of photo enhancements do you do?

[username223]

Mostly boosting shadows. When your shoot outdoors, it's usually best to properly expose the bright regions, then fix up the dark ones afterwards.

[matwood]

On my DSLR taken photos I white balance/color correct, level, and crop all photos I'm going to keep. Photos that have particularly good subjects, I may get artistic and play with other settings until I see something I like.

[micampe]

Very often you just need to adjust levels and white balance to see a significant improvement on many photos. You don’t even need Lightroom for that, even more basic photo editors like OS X Photos work fine.