apdieb wrote:
I find that Noise Ninja and Neat Image do a decent job with Chroma noise. I use LR for workflow, but PP with NR in CS4. I have tried C1 a few times and just cannot get used to it. No doubt a good product. Just not what works best for me unfortunately.
I can live with C1 for a small subset of images (iso 3200) though I dislike a great deal about it (while loving the colour, tonality, film curve, detail and noise reduction). Thing is and I had a long play trying this out on friday, ACR/LR is applying significant noise reduction with all sliders at zero and that will mess up the results from 3rd party noise software. I tried the same file, processed in C1 from RAW, zero chroma blotching. From ACR with all noise set to zero, import into C1, apply chroma reduction, same blotching you get with the regular ACR/LR colour noise reduction. Unfortunately using other tests, the noise reduction software in PS uses the same engine as the one in ACR (though worse for colour noise). Bottom line, colour blotching from a ACR/LR file even if you try to turn off all 'interference'.
I know that C1 gives better detail and general luminance reduction, but I don't care much about that, not when the noise is pretty much insignificant in real world use. Colour blotching however looks awful, especially in peoples dark hair and that does bother me enough to have spent time on the tests. It's not pixel peeping when you can see it on small prints.
Point is again, there is no blotching out of the camera, period, just lots of chroma noise, it's the unique approach adobe uses to noise reduction that smears it into big unsightly colour blotches across shadows and dark areas at certain iso's on certain cameras which is the problem. I don't blame the camera for that.