Your camera settings have a huge influence over the quality of your photos—both technically and aesthetically. What you want to achieve are images with sharpness from foreground to background (depth of field), moving objects frozen and not blurred, and details in the shadows and highlights. Knowing how to achieve these ends, and also their exact opposites, is what photography is all about.

• The camera may display many, but not all, of the camera's current settings on the monitor. Check the display before taking pictures to see if any settings need to be changed.
• The image on the monitor reflects all of the camera's settings. Be sure to check your results to see if any of them need adjustment. Zoom in on highlight and shadow areas to see if they retain any details. Pure blacks and whites should be avoided if at all possible.
• When you change settings, some of them may be reset when you select a different exposure mode or turn off the camera. Others are not reset and therefore affect future shots unless you reset them individually or use your camera's reset command to reset them all. Be sure to look carefully at the images you are taking. If you are not getting the results you expect it may be time to reset.
• Use a fast shutter speed to reduce or eliminate blur caused by camera or subject movement.
• Use a small aperture to increase depth of field. Selective focus, where the foreground and background is out of focus, doesn't work as well in 3D as it does in 2D and with point and shoot cameras is hard to do anyway.
• Understand your camera's warnings, often given by settings on the monitor blink or change color.
• The most frequently used settings are often assigned to buttons and dials. Other settings are listed on menus, some of which have multiple levels. As painful as it may seem, at least skim through the manual that came with your camera so you know what features it has.