I'm wondering if this is normal, but I'm finding that lot of files at high ISOs viewed in Lightroom 2.0 show a lot more color noise than say Capture NX? I'm quite puzzled by this.... Is this normal? It's really a night and day difference... the noise in Capture NX has a much more pleasant appearance.

Here, someone else has brought this up

https://forum.adobe.com/webx?14@@.59b625fc/17

Has anyone else here experienced this?

my experience is that ACR does a great job with my high ISO stuff even better than my preferred editor for everything else : NX2

Well, LR 2 makes my high ISO files look really bad, so I don't know if I'll be using it anymore... I am not sure what the reason is.

By default Lightroom adds a lot of brightness to your images. Have you turned that down?

It's the "Brightness" slider, turn that down to zero. I'm happy with how it handles noise for me, does a very nice job.

OK, never mind. The problem is obviously me and not Lightroom. :o I just realized that I was looking at NEF files without noise reduction and and the JPEGs which obviously must have noise reduction. Hell, of course they are going to look less noisy. :o I am feeling very silly about starting this thread now

EDIT : opening NEF files in Irfanview still doesn't display the noise in NEF that is present in those files in Lightroom... what gives? I'm sure it's me being an idiot again.