Yes, considerably better. I use Imagenomic Noiseware Photoshop plug in and find it very effective but I believe most of the third party applications are very good.
Jim ... I own a number of the plugins (my favorite is Dfine 2.0 ... as if you didn't have enough choices before). But, I rarely use them because there are a number of ways to deal with noise in ACR/Photoshop. To better understand you situation, what approaches are you using for noise reduction (ACR, Photoshop NR, Gaussian Blur, Dustt and Scratches, Masking etc.)? What kinds of situations are causing your problems (noise in sky, etc.)? Many noise problems are just exposure problems at the point of capture. Shooting to the right, ie. biasing your exposure toward the right side of the histogram can often reduce or remove noise.
I am using CS3 NR, and to be quite honest, have only tried it three times. I probably need to read about it further, because the three times I have used it I have just winged it. I agree that my exposures were probably under exposed and not pushed to the right as much as could be. I was at 800 ISO last time with children jumping off of a diving board in an older gym with poor light and did not want to go any higher with the ISO. Also wanted to keep my shutter speed up to stop the action. At any rate, results are not good and thought that I could attack it from the noise reduction side to improve it.
I use Neat Image, and like it but the default settings have a tendency to be a bit aggressive so you can get some over-processed results. But in the worst of circumstances it's WAY better than CS3 or, even worse, in-camera noise reduction.
photosenior wrote:
sorry to hi-jack the thread- but can people remind me when in the workflow is best to use the noise reduction.
Thanks!
It is best to make noise reduction your first step in your workflow. That is the simple answer for the approach (noise reduction filters or plugins) that everyone is referring to in this thread. But, noise reduction is a complex topic that involves a broader range of techniques that extend from the point of capture all the way to the print so there are many ways to deal with noise issues.
I use the NeatImage+ noise reduction plugin and it works great. I would recommend taking the time to create a noise profile for your camera as well. It is basically taking a photo of the same subject at every ISO setting (camera on a tripod, even lighting etc., etc.,) that way it is very easy to remove a specific amount of noise rather than leaving the software in an auto NR mode.
