All in the metadata Nigel.

Photoshop.

You started off by asking if you'd made a major mistake buying Pentax. But it can't be that, and the evidence is all around us in all the superb images that members are posting on this site. So it has to be something else.

It would be great if we could see some images so they can be judged - the problem might become obvious.

As a generality, I would ditch using RAW, use the highest quality level of JPEG instead. The use the menus to increase the sharpness setting, maybe also increase the saturation, but it's a matter of taste. Set the custom image to Bright, or even Vivid, and then we're starting to get somewhere that your compact cameras already are.

Hope that helps, but of course without seeing your pictures we are making (educated) guesses.

It's all a bit of fun, it reminds me of the excitement of seeing the new Top 50 every week, just wanting the things I liked to do well in the charts. But we don't buy things because they are doing well do we? We buy them because they fulfil a function, apart from the collectors maybe who might like to have every model or for that matter every No 1 record.

The CSC market may well be growing, but the sales overall are relatively low compared to the DSLR market. The money is in actually making money, that is, profit. So it can even be better to sell less, providing the margin is right. There are so many things we don't know about all of this that it makes the statistics offered from time to time almost meaningless. Fun remains.

That's not a problem, I'll have a look at how we might do that best.

You're right that it's got to be an image you like and not somebody else's interpretation.

I think the subject would like your revised version of No 1 much better, and hopefully the judges will too. I don't know who the judges are, but if they are not photographers then the criteria they judge by may be very different to ours. In that context, warmer will probably score higher.

The first one is very nice, but might appeal more generally if you warm it up. people like warm portraits.

The second one is a striking portrait, but do we need that splodge of light and space on the left. Crop it out completely and we're left with a brilliant, head on portrait.

The third I would crop out or clone out the small light area bottom left. The crop on the hair line is fine, but the crop under the chin is cutting things very close. Maybe a tad more space there?

Fascinating, or whatever happened to poor Sony?

I'm not sure what the statistical value of all the figures might be, but it's always interesting, so thank you jules for posting it.

I can't see that figure of 7.5% down to 4.5% anywhere in that linked item Algi, what are you looking at?

OK, new thread for that please and I'll move theses on to Your Photos as well, which might get more views and responses.