Color (White) balancing makes a big difference. I find my photos look amazing after automatic color balancing. Some people call it photoshopping but nowadays most digital cameras can be configured to do some kind of processing/correction without software on a PC.
I personally don't like manually increasing color intensities in photos and won't do it myself. But I use automatic color balancing all the time. In addition, I found my aquarium lighting makes a big difference. So far my Kessils give me better colors for photos than my halides and T5s. From what I can see, a lot of store photos are simply color/white balanced and they look amazing. I don't have any issues when people use automatic color balancing on their photos. A few people here and there probably go beyond color balancing and generally, those photos look fake to me. That, I'm not thrilled with.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_balance
