Poll: What NR do you use

[K-amps]

Just wondering what NR people prefer to use. I have CS5 but I like Nik Denoise in paralell with Topaz Denoise. I used to use LR NR and before that CS NR, but not anymore.  What do you guys prefer and why?

Votes are changeable:

Let me know if there are other software you guys use. I can add as an option.

Lastly: The focus of this poll is to get opinions from people who have used multiple products and have them share their reasons for preferring one over the other.

[neuroanatomist]

I'm sure some folks use Aperture (I use it for library management, but not RAW conversions).

[K-amps]

Thanks for pointing it out John.

Added.

[lol]

NeatImage is missing. That's the one I settled on for general and special use, although I do use DxO for raw conversion primarily as I found its noise rendition to be the best out of the mainstream converters.

I did go through every noise reduction plugin I could find at the time. There's surprisingly little between them if you adjust their strengths to be comparable, as the default settings vary a lot trading between detail retention and noise reduction. Possibly Topaz DeNoise was slightly better than the rest, but I really didn't get on with its interface and it was also the slowest.

[K-amps]

Thanks lol. Added an option for it.  I like Nik for gentle non-obtrusive non pixel peeping applications, and Topaz Denoise if I want to clean everything else... I agree it is slow, even with 16 Ghz of processing power at my disposal (32Ghz with hyper-threading  )

[well_dunno]

I am using both windows and linux but  for the little postprocessing I do, I use DPP on windows. Wonder the software choice of Linux only folks - Darktable? Raw therapee? ufraw? Gimp?

Cheers!

[axeri]

I only use lightroom but haven't tried other options, very interested in what other people do.

[Waterdonkey]

I'm using Aperture but I don't feel that it deals with Noise very well at all.  Does someone know of a good aperture Plug-In for NR?  I Just don't like exporting a pict to another program for a fix and then back again.  I did try LR 4 but while it dealt with noise very well, I found the rest of the interface Wonky.

[Marsu42]

I only use lightroom but haven't tried other options, very interested in what other people do.

I'd still like to see a real comparison between a recent LR & dpp, the latter is said to handle nr better because it's tuned for Canon's sensors while LR is very generic. This might make a difference for shots that need high nr, but since LR is absolutely ok for low LR (like 10/10 to 25/25 luma/chroma) I never tried, esp. since LR4 now has the NR adjustment brush.

[bigbadhenry]

Imagenomic Noiseware

[PeterJ]

You forgot the "What noise?" option

But I answered LR which is all I ever use, I like the workflow but have been meaning to check out some of the other options some recommend for the odd occasional that may benefit from a bit extra.

[stefsan]

The NIK NR software is called Dfine.

[Northstar]

I'm using Aperture but I don't feel that it deals with Noise very well at all.  Does someone know of a good aperture Plug-In for NR?  I Just don't like exporting a pict to another program for a fix and then back again.  I did try LR 4 but while it dealt with noise very well, I found the rest of the interface Wonky.

I used Aperture but felt the same as you so I tried Nik Dfine and really like it.   It works much better than Aperture noise reduction. 

I would also say that the Nik sharpener pro is also much better than the Aperture sharpening tools.  These two products have made my images better...no doubt about it.

Also, there is no importing or exporting with Nik...which I really like.  When in Aperture on the adjustments tab, you simply hit the "edit with plug-in" button, and nik launches a new window in front of aperture.  When you've finished, you just click the save button and the nik software quickly closes and the new and original image are now in the aperture...very simple and easy to use.