Moon Shot and Post-Processing Comparison

Moon, Waxing Gibbous, 74% illuminated

Yesterday I wrote briefly on how to shoot the moon (btw - the settings I used are just a guide that should at least get you in the ballpark).  If you read it you'll note that I shoot in raw mode and did very little post-processing to that image.  

Today's moon shot will compare one image with more thorough processing to the same image with the processing that I applied to yesterday's moon.  I'll even throw in a jpeg image straight out of the camera to top off the comparison.  The three images shown here are of one moon shot taken this evening, 9/4/2014, with different post-processing applied.  

The image that begins this article is post-processed as such:  Whites +30, Clarity +35, Sharpening 50, Detail 50, Masking 40.  At this point I liked it and stopped.  The settings in the camera are the same as used yesterday with the one exception that I used spot metering this time.  

This second image was post-processed with only Clarity +35 which is what I used on yesterday's image.  When comparing it to the one above on my 27" screen it is clearly inferior.  So why did I post it as such yesterday?  Because I was amazed at how good it looked with so little post-processing applied.  But after uploading that post I knew I could make the image even better, which I did, and then uploaded it to my Flickr account.

This third image is the jpeg straight out of camera.  After uploading it to the computer I noted that the in-camera jpeg setting is STD, with sharpening set to 6 and saturation 1.  It is far inferior to the post-processed raw images that were then converted to jpegs and downloaded to this post.  It strains my eyes to even look at it.

Bonus - forth image.  It is the out of camera jpeg above that I processed in LR.  Not bad.  Looks pretty good now with the exception of the thin bright white line that outlines the moon from about 11 o'clock to 5 o'clock or so.  It's in the jpeg image above also, just not as pronounced.  I don't see it at all in the first two images of which are post-processed raws.  Anyway, I found this to be a fun little exercise.  What do you think?