Four Thirds User

When I switch Noise Reduction to OFF, Noise Filter to OFF and Gradation to NORMAL I get the best quality and least noise in all shooting situations. Can anyone explain this contradiction. It's driving me crazy.

A canon user for many years now converted to Micro Four Thirds.

First of all I must say sorry because of no pictures in thread. It's due to busy times and there is a mess with all the images (I havent even managed to unload the pics from one CF card for couple of months).

After my wife complained several months about the recycling time of FL-36R I made her a christmas present with Metz 52 AF-1.
Out of the box it was a nice piece with leg and soft bag. When I powered it up it got a bit strange as I was used with buttons and wheel but it...

A friend of mine was playing with his band in a village dance party near my home couple of weeks ago and asked me to join. As the weather was nice, it was only ca 30km away and hasnt seen them performing before thought it would be fun to spend the evening there. Took along my E-1 with 35mm, 14-42 and FL-36R. Soon found that the kit lens was that I took for wide angle shoots wasn't actually the one needed. Would have benefited more from 40-150 lens plus later in the evening the lens was a bit too...

Have used only basic post processing elements so far (exposure, WB, etc) but while looking at Robert Watcher video about layer masks thought it doesn't look so hard. Well it sure would help a lot if one would know how to use the software .
The first one was made with separate layers and lasso not with masks as in video but lets take it step by step and also as read from the thread there he started the same way. Next thing to do in the future is to study how these layer masks work and...