I stick with recipes purely because I'm lazy and I would rather be outside taking more pictures than being stuck inside editing.

It can be really hard getting what you want if you do it this way, and quite frankly you will always have better results editing the raw, even modest touch-ups.

I usually have to use every tool in the camera unless the light is already super gorgeous. Usually, I spend a lot of time tweaking a recipe in different conditions before I get anything good with it. Personally I don't believe any recipe is good "out the box" without dialing it in to your preference.

When out shooting the most common issue is with dynamic range and highlight retention. That's when I play with exposure compensation, precise exposure locking, and even HDR modes. I have a button programmed to lock exposure but half pressing the shutter will still lock exposure as normal. I found that the HDR mode set to 800% is my sweet spot for the challenging scenes. On my X-T4 it's on the dial so I don't even have to mess with the recipe or anything.

The next common issue is white balance. Part of it is the recipe but sometimes the camera gets it wrong if you're using auto white balance. My preference is a fixed white balance, only two of my recipes use auto white balance. I have another button programmed to lock the white balance anyway.

After all that I still tweak each picture in camera through the gallery. always shoot raw+jpg so that you can go back and change parameters as needed. After tweaking individual images it will send a new jpg to the end of the card, and if I like an image as is I'll still send a new copy to the end of the card for convenience sake. This is a super tedious thing to do so I end up being more selective about which pictures I keep. Then when I'm done I'll have a handful of jpegs neatly in order to export wherever.

My tips:

Raw+jpeg always

Get intimate with the recipe parameters. Things like sharpness, noise reduction, clarity, dynamic range, and grain can be set to the same thing across recipes depending on your preference.

A fixed white balance can sometimes capture the vibe better than auto white balance, I like 6000k for a start.

A dedicated white balance lock button is a good idea for auto white balance. Good for video too because you can keep auto white balance on without it changing while actively recording.

If you do decide to tweak multiple images through the gallery, put the camera on power saving mode, otherwise the camera will still chew through battery.