Adobe has turned off the Apple Neural Engine support for Denoise in the 14.0 update today, due to a bug that was causing quality issues. So Apple users can expect longer times for Denoise.
Has anyone done any controlled testing to see the difference? (which RIkk Flohr says is dramatic in deep shadows)
My main desktop is Windows but my travel laptop is an M1 MBP and I have used denoise while on the road (including right now) and I can't say I've seen any problem. Of course I may have been pushing the slider harder on the MBP to get acceptable results and not done a seperate denoise on my Win 10 desktop when I got home.
I'm going to run some test files on both machines with the old rev, then update both and repeat, but won't be home for a few days.
I'm still on LRC 13.5.1 and tend to hold off on updates a little while. Thanks for the heads up about ANE support being turned off in LRC 14. I sometimes process a couple thousand images in a batch and any time savings gained is appreciated, which was almost 2x faster with ANE support, so will hold off on the update for now.
In regard to deep shadow image quality on ANE supported Denoise: I recently noticed that Canon R6II low ISO images (100, 200) run through Denoise and pushed heavily to recover shadow details revealed a green shift and what looked like jpeg compression artifacts (rather than 'natural' looking grain) in low detail areas, noticeable when viewed at 200%. I thought it was because the files were originally CRAW (Canon's compressed RAW). And maybe that is part of the problem? I would have to find a standard low ISO RAW file to Denoise and process similarly as a comparison. Higher ISO Denoised files with normal processing looked as expected and didn't reveal any noticeable image quality problems.
After a quick comparison of heavy shadow push on a few ISO 200 files before and after Denoise, there is a green shift in very deep shadows (I guess near the file's actual black point). But I'm only seeing it with extreme pushes (~4+ stops) in very deep shadows and mostly in non-realistic file adjustments. The files with the same adjustments but to the original Canon CRAW, do not show a green shift. The jpeg compression artifacts I mentioned earlier appear to be inherent to the compressed RAW files as they are there prior to Denoise. They are reduced by Denoise (at 50%), but not eliminated.