The starting point in NX Studio is using all the camera settings. If you just hit save as, you will get the same result as the in-camera jpeg. The big difference is that you can tweak much more dynamic range out of a 12-bit raw file than an 8-bit jpg as there is more information to play with.
You can also use levels and curves to make a bird pop from the background.
Some parameters are locked-in in the jpg that can be changed if you shoot in raw.
If you need extensive editing, remember that JPG is a lossy format that will compress with new settings every time you save, making the compression artefacts visible in surprisingly few iterations.
This photo was quite bland with the bird nearly merging with the background straight out of camera. About 5 minutes of work in Photo Ninja later, it looked like this.
I am posting this from my iPad, so I don’t have the original file available right now. I’ll post the unedited version later if you are interested.