I remember seeing a video where Jackson was raving about how they can relight shots, showing a pretty uniformly lit shot in Hobbiton. They went on to try to add directional light, shadows etc. using masks, and the image just got worse and worse until it was an inconsistent mess. But apparently they liked that.

And don’t get me started on how they smoothed the dwarves’ skin out so they look like glamour models. I really can not fathom what they were thinking.