If you are using quality fonts, as you should be, you will only need to adjust the kerning in very rare cases. The type designers are the ones who have to concern themselves heavily with the font kerning. Which is why font design software, such as fontlab or glyphs, have an insane amount of kerning related functionality, whereas the kerning provided by something like, say, photoshop or indesign, will do what you need it to--which is make minimal adjustments in corner cases.