How to avoid too much photoshoping??

[Moon Baby]

Ok last question then i promise to leave this alone! If i were to use a camera with a larger sensor and with higher mega pixels ( i think the camera that took the picture used between 8-10 megapixels and did not have a full frame sensor) would that make a difference in these sorts of issues? Like say if i were to use the Mark II at 21.1 megapixels with its full frame sensor would i be able to have noticable results, and possibly erase my over processed picture noise completely (or close to) so long as i shoot in RAW? (with of course ignoring any other possible factors that could affect image quality)

You could consider a 5D Mark I and you'll be fine in the noise department. The 5D Mark II has 1 stop advantage in ISO performance but both would create noticeable image quality over other cameras. Which is delicious.

If you shoot in RAW and then convert to 16bit jpeg, you'll have a more lenient exposure latitude, and if you downsize your picture, there will be no visible noise depending on the ISO you shot at. Just make sure to not edit your jpeg pictures over and over again. If you have to, revert to your original RAW image to avoid any jpeg artifacting. Every time you save a jpeg file, it gets compressed.
It's not really about the camera...just your workflow!

 

[Dwig]

...If i were to use a camera with a larger sensor and with higher mega pixels would that make a difference in these sorts of issues? ...

No, at least not directly.

If it did make a difference, the lower noise would make the problem worse my removing the "haze" of noisy pixels and leaving the posterized edge more obvious.

A higher performance body that had a 16bit RAW format instead of the common 12bit RAW formats would offer a distince chance for improvement, but only if you converted the 16bit RAW into a 16bit bitmaps format (e.g. TIFF, PSD, ...) and didn't reduce it to an 8bit image.