Noise, what do you use

[jimmyjamjojo]

DXO if I am using autofocus lenses

Lightroom AI if I the photo was taken with legacy manual focus lenses that DXO knows nothing about

I'm not sure I understand... How can a lens have any effect on noise?

 

[LCPete]

I'm not sure I understand... How can a lens have any effect on noise?

I think it’s because DXO and Lightroom both do noise reduction but DXO does not have lens corrections for older lenses

 

[Bristolian]

My preference is to use Topaz Photo AI with "autopilot" turned off. The ability to denoise, sharpen and increase the pixel dimensions of the image all in one place speeds up processing.

 

[Nikon f1.8]

I have a Nikon z6 ii so it does not affect me

 

[ancient_mariner]

I think it’s because DXO and Lightroom both do noise reduction but DXO does not have lens corrections for older lenses

They would need to be very old lenses not to be in dxo.

 

[droj]

They would need to be very old lenses not to be in dxo.

That's untrue - their optics list is quite thin on even up-to-date manual focus lenses ...

 

[ancient_mariner]

That's untrue - their optics list is quite thin on even up-to-date manual focus lenses ...

Really? A key selling point in the past was the wide range of optics for which they had detailed corrections. Has that changed more recently.

 

[droj]

Really? A key selling point in the past was the wide range of optics for which they had detailed corrections. Has that changed more recently.

Nothing's changed - you've just swallowed their advertising hype without investigating further. Shame on you! I don't think that a single one of my modern Zeiss or Voigtlander lenses are included, regardless of the body that they're used on. Never mind much else.

 

[droj]

And at the risk of distracting the thread, I also have an overview, which is that all lenses have an optical character that can be celebrated in our images, whilst much of the modern thrust seems to aim towards a denaturing of this in a quest for engineering 'perfection'.

But that hasn't much to do with the original question. Except that the noise reduction in, say, LR5 or 6, or recent versions of C1, seems to satisfy my needs enough from sensors of any vintage. My baseline is for my images to have a kind of honest 'character', whilst others might indeed chase a sort of engineering nirvana. But where does this syntheticism stop?

It's a bit like the current petty arguments about self-driving cars, where environmentally in the real world it would be better if we didn't have cars at all.

Where do we want to go? What do we want to say? What is the point?

Apologies to petrolhead the OP for my intrusion! Please all now carry on as before.

 

[Musicman]

The lenses I was talking about are mostly 1970s and 80s Canon FD, Contax C/Y and Olympus OM
lenses, adapted using a dumb adapter, so there is no EXIF data for DXO PureRAW to use to work out which profile to use even if DXO had one in their library. For zooms there is no focal length data, and for everything no aperture or focal distance data to work with, not to mention perspective correction shift lenses…

Pertinent to the original question, without lens profile data, PureRAW does a significantly worse job of act reducing noise than it does otherwise, and the image is significantly softer than the unprocessed original. Quite the opposite of my AF lenses where I have to rein back DXO’s default sharpening quite firmly. I guess it’s part of the AI algorithm.

Anyhow, IME Lightroom AI NR produces better results than DXO when there is no lens data available.

 

[ancient_mariner]

Shame on you!

Shame on me? It seemed to cope well with my 1980s Minolta lenses well enough in Optics Pro format, as well as the various slightly later Nikon F mount lenses. But yes, lets return to the topic now you've 'shamed me'.

I had thought you better than this, Roger.

 

[Fuji Dave]

I use to use DXO and other editing software I have, but as I only use my mobile phones now my editing is done in the phone app. Shame I can't sell on my software as don't use them anymore.

 

[Mintchocs]

I just got DXO pureraw 3 in their Black Friday sale. I have to say I was very impressed with the quality of my high iso 6D files. It’s not just the noise reduction but also the demosaicing of the RAWs.

​

 

[droj]

Shame on me? It seemed to cope well with my 1980s Minolta lenses well enough in Optics Pro format, as well as the various slightly later Nikon F mount lenses. But yes, lets return to the topic now you've 'shamed me'.

I had thought you better than this, Roger.

Sorry if I seemed to be indelicate, Toni, but having used PL6 in very recent times, I noticed that it had no listings available that could be called down for the modern Zeiss / Voigtlander manual focus lenses I was using on modern bodies. The last LR I used was v6, the last pre-subscription model, but it was easy to manually set up your own lens profiles there that dealt with things like barrel distortion, chromatic abberation - and indeed vignetting if one was bothered about that. In Photolab, these things seem more remote, as if the ethos is almost entirely focussed on DxO's touted in-house corrections, without which, it seems, you're a bit screwed. Just my impression, but I'm still learning.

In other words, LR was the most effective hands-on option, given the offset vintages of app stated.

None of this impinges on the noise issue that the thread started with - in that context it's a bit of a distraction.

 

[skullfunkerry]

I often don't bother, but if I do I just use the noise reduction in Affinity.

 

[Paulie-W]

If I'm running high ISO, it'll go through pure raw 3, otherwise if wanted topaz denoise Ai

 

[dcash29]

Now that there is Topaz Photo AI2, why purchase Topaz denoise?

 

[Box Brownie]

FWIW

Sharpen AI & DeNoise AI are end of life i.e. ceased development in late 2023

Gigapixel AI had ceased but has been given a new lease of life just last month (Jan 24) and apparently, though not 100% clear it is as far as Gigapixel function a subset of Photo AI

 

[Dale.]

I tend to use a decent exposure, most of the time.

As this is about PP though, I did find Topaz very good but now, LR NR seems to cover my needs.

 

[LCPete]

I read last night that the end result from processing RAW image's is pretty much indistinguishable between DXO and Lightroom but Lightroom takes more steps to get there but has more adjustment available
it was on DXO forum not sure if it’s ok to link to other forums here

 

[KarlMa]

I normally just use LR and, if it requires a bit more heavy lifting, DxO. For a while a had Topaz, but I don't think that brings any advantage anymore.

 

[skullfunkerry]

I tend to just use the noise reduction in Affinity; although as @RichardC27 said, the noise with Fuji isn't much of a problem - to me it almost looks like film grain.