Scope upgrade ?

I currently own an LX10. I've been looking at an upgrade to something
larger, maybe 11, 12" or larger SCT.

Just got December 2003 Astronomy magazine and looked at the reader gallery
with dozens of Mars photos, the kind of thing I'm interested in. Are they
representative of the quality you can get ?. The best appears to be the 16"
Pentax, presumably at some huge cost, and Damian Peach's 10" doesn't look
far behind. Some of the 14" and 16" results look decidedly poor in
comparison. Is a lot of this down to the processing ?.

Basically is it worth paying the extra for the the difference between the
sizes to view the planets etc when from these results 10" looks good ?

Thanks