No, I think the same. The Pix photos look a bit washed out. Faces are brighter, but it doesn't look natural to me anymore. I'd rather use a flash for the pictures where faces were really dark, would probably deliver better results.
Definitly not. Two faces, say 5% of the total image are correctly exposed at the expense of the other 95%. If you're serious with photo editing you increase the exposure of the faces afterwards a bit...
