Top panels: comparison between the observed spectrum and the fit from STECKMAP (left), STARLIGHT (middle), and ULySS (right). For STARLIGHT and ULySS we use the “constant SFR” approach. Black: fully reduced, emission-cleaned composite spectrum of the LMC bar. Red: fit from the different codes. Bottom panels: residuals of those fits computed as observed – best model. For the stellar content analysis we use the wavelength range from 3800 to 6800 Å (dashed vertical red lines; see text for details). The shaded regions of the spectrum are the masked regions (not considered in the fits). The residuals are in units of 10^-15 erg^-1 cm^-2 Å^-1.