Nice to see you trying out this new option! Certainly the path traced version looks much nicer to my eye, more realistic and well shaded overall. But beyond that I don't think it's entirely useful to compare the two due to the clear difference in lighting. I can say with fair confidence that the majority of the overall change in lighting is not coming from path tracing (after doing somewhere around a zillion tests myself
). Perhaps the original image used multiple suns and you've removed/disabled that for the path traced version? Or perhaps it's just the change in clouds, which can certainly have a notable impact on lighting.
I'd also say the "contrast" in the path traced version is actually higher, for example the darker areas of dense trees are now *darker* than they were, while the light areas remain light. That's increased contrast, right? But regardless those changes certainly do need to be taken into account when setting up images, especially for those familiar with the non-path traced output of old.
- Oshyan