And the winner is: RAW and my own processing (might just be my ego)

[bnnrcn]

Certainly better and very nice

[JBW]

Certainly better and very nice

Grumpy has just shared a workflow with me. Things should be improving as I make it my own.

[Manfred M]

Grumpy has just shared a workflow with me. Things should be improving as I make it my own.

Once you develop a workflow (and this goes for shooting and post-processing), you will start finding that you will get more consistent results. I find that one mistake a lot of people that are relatively new to both aspects of photography frequently make is trying too many things at once.

The problem is by changing one variable at a time, you can see the impact of that change (positive or negative) on your image. If you go and try changing more than one thing, you won't know which one impacted the change you are seeing.