  Hard X-ray tomography with Paganin's widespread single-distance phase
retrieval filter improves contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) while reducing spatial
resolution (SR). We demonstrate that a Gaussian filter provided larger CNR at
high SR with interpretable density measurements for two medically relevant soft
tissue samples. Paganin's filter produced larger CNR at low SR, though \emph{a
priori} assumptions were generally false and image quality gains diminish for
CNR $>1$. Therefore, simple absorption measurements of low-$Z$ specimens
combined with Gaussian filtering can provide improved image quality and
model-independent density measurements compared to single-distance phase
retrieval.
