My experience is similar to yours. My wife and I are our churches photographers. We sit in the front row and photograph the service. We give the most attention to the pastor and all of the members who take an active part in the service. We also photograph special events like the church's annual Trunk Or Treat program, and the different things our volunteers do to help people in need in our community.

We take a lot of photographs and I want them to be pleasing. I don't have time to do a lot of photo shopping so I usually crop as needed, auto contrast, auto color correcting, sharpening, auto haze reduction, and then tweak the lighting, and color settings. This usually less than five minutes per photo. I also have never used layers.

The lighting in our church is not very bright and there is a huge stained glass window behind the alter so many of pour photos are back lighted. Using the auto haze reduction feature is a big help in producing better images in that situation.

I started using it about two months ago and I think it is so much better than using the shutter button to focus. The best thing for me is that once you focus your camera, it stays focused at that distance. So, if you are photographing a still image, your camera won't have to refocus after each shot, which I find annoying. You also eliminate accidental shooting because you pushed the shutter button too hard.