Comparing a Polarizer With Raw processing -- I often don't even think about packing polarizers on my outings, although I should, at least for landscape outings, and I have plenty of them! So today I did a test: I put a circular polarizer on my EOS 1D3 with the 24-105 lens and shot at a few polarizer settings (equal exposure). I took the "strongest" polarization effect and the "weakest" and went to play!

These two are with the weakest effect/setting, Before and After applying a good amount of Blue luminance reduction and highlight recovery, and then you see the very basic settings used to get this effect -- not bad!