Without looking at your EXIF data, I think your photo is fine. But, .......
The kit lenses are not good examples of quality lenses. They are designed to teach you how to use the camera and interchangeable lenses. But, with practice and insight, you can capture quality photos with the kit lenses. With better lenses, you can capture very high quality photos.
I think your sample photo is actually pretty good. Digital images have resolution limits. You can zoom in on a photo so far that it appears to be fuzzy, out of focus, and pixelated. I think you posted is a good candidate of this possibility. But, there are other factors that can contribute to misconceptions about the quality of a photo.
You have expressed a lack of confidence in your knowledge of how to use the camera. I have recently created a thread that contains links to a few tutorial playlists on the Canon YouTube channel.
https://community.usa.canon.com/t5/General-Camera-Discussion/Canon-YouTube-Video-Series/m-p/269237#M...
Take a look at the series of videos at the first link, “EOS 101.” This series introduces you to the two most basic concepts in photography the “ Exposure Triangle “ and “ Depth Of Field “. Most people benefit from watching them more than once. There is a lot of material and concepts to digest.
One of the most important concepts is how you save your images in the camera. You can save them as RAW or JPG. Digital cameras are designed to emulate the behavior of film cameras. Film cameras came in two basic flavors. You had cameras that film cartridges, which could spit out a print [JPG]. Or, you would have a roll of film that would needed to be developed in a laboratory [RAW].
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Back to your posted photo. I think it is as almost as good as it gets with the 18-55mm kit lens. Any improvements in image quality would have to come from technique. Techniques such as using a high shutter speed, low ISO, thoughtful aperture setting, and using a stable platform like a tripod.
As for the colors in the image, one of the EOS 101 videos explains WB, White Balance. The human brain is very good at fooling the eye into showing you what colors should look like, instead of what they actually look like. White Balance compensates for the color spectrum of your light source when you take a photograph.
For example, if someone is wearing a white shirt in a dark room, and you shine a green light on them, your brain will show you a white shirt and a green light. Your camera will simply see a green shirt. Your camera has different WB settings, including an automatic setting. But, even the automatic setting can be slightly off the mark, or even completely fooled by multiple light sources.
This is where saving your photos as RAW or JPG comes into play. When you shoot as JPG files, you wil get an instant photo image, which cannot be edited very well. However, when you shoot as RAW, you have file that can be edited more easily than a JPG, most especially when it comes to setting up proper WB levels.
Just like a guy in film dark room, you need to convert the digital negative, a RAW file, into a digital print, a JPG file. You can use Canon’s Digital Photo Professional software to perform this task. You can use Canon DPP software to adjust the WB of your captured images however you like. You can also use a “grey card’ to capture a sample image so that you can calibrate the WB settings to the available light when you took the photos.
If this sounds like a LOT, then that is because it is a lot. Your camera is an instrument that requires practice to use well. My advice is to keep shooting, keep practicing exposure settings. Learn how to shoot RAW images and process them into JPG images.
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