Today’s Question: As a follow-up to your answer about using AI Denoise, how do you decide when to use this rather than the manual noise reduction in Lightroom Classic?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Based on my experience, I consider using the Denoise feature when an image has extreme noise that isn’t responding well to manual noise reduction. I’ve also found that the Denoise feature in Topaz Photo AI (https://www.topazlabs.com/topaz-photo-ai/ref/273/) generally produces better results than Adobe’s current Denoise feature.
More Detail: Overall, I have had mixed results with the Denoise feature found in Adobe products such as Lightroom Classic and Camera Raw. In some cases it works remarkably well, but in others there is too much degradation of texture and sharpness in the image, even when used at a moderate setting.
As a result, I’ve gotten in the habit of using the manual noise reduction as a first step for noisy images, to see if I can get a good result without using Denoise.
For situations where I’m not happy with the results using manual noise reduction, I’ll try the Denoise feature. Sometimes it works great, and sometimes I’m left disappointed. But my point is that I’ve not found Adobe’s Denoise feature to be reliable enough that I use it as my primary tool for dealing with noisy images.
In the process of exploring other options, I also recently spent some time testing the updated Denoise feature in Photo AI from Topaz Labs. I was quite impressed with the results, and in most cases found that the Denoise feature from Topaz produced superior results to Denoise from Adobe.
This is obviously a moving target, as both companies will surely continue to improve the results we can achieve with their respective Denoise features. For the moment though, I’m finding that Topaz Photo AI is providing the best Denoise solution, and so it is my go-to tool for images that have significant problems with noise.
You can learn more about Topaz Photo AI here:
https://www.topazlabs.com/topaz-photo-ai/ref/273/
