Lightroom DeNoise AI for Aviation Photography | April 2023 Update

[@Brummiemartin]

800 ISO? Lucky you. ;-) Just back from the Sunset Airshow at Sanicole where the first photos that I've examined were taken at ISO4000 on my EOS R7. The one thing I like above all others in Lightroom's noise reduction facility is that you can batch process lots of photos. I'm seriously contemplating putting all the "CR3" RAW images through noise reduction, keeping the resultant DNG files as my new RAW files and binning the CR3's. ALSO, I much prefer the idea of using the Lightroom created DNG files which inherit the other Lightroom settings compared to new TIFF files that Topaz creates that inherits your adjusted settings as the "new zero" and loses all your adjustment history.

[@dmacnet]

The new Lightroom denoise is excellent. I find that photos often benefit from the DxO PureRaw approach of sharpening as part of the demosaicing and denoising process, and the DxO DNG files are considerably smaller than Lightroom's, so I use DxO more. But sometimes Lightroom produces better results. For raw photos taken with an iPhone, DxO isn't an option and Lightroom does a great job.

[@andrewyeates7717]

I've been using Topaz denoise for over a year now for aviation and its worked very good with the noise. I have found a lot of the time it leaves weird artifacts around the edges and particularly txt. Also with higher ISO say on dark skies it leaves them looking very muddy. Having tried LR denoise on various images now I think it absolutely destroys topaz. Files are super clean with Zero artifacts around the edges or txt, while still retaining amazing detail. It's only their first version of this which surely means can only get better. Would particularly love to see it being able to use as a seperate layer in Photoshop.

[@sturousephoto]

100% agree!

[@astroguy5364]

Found your channel a few days ago, really enjoy your content! Surprising lack of aviation photography content on YT

[@sturousephoto]

Thank you! I’ll do my best to keep making more!

[@bfortelka]

The one concern I have with the new LR Denoise AI is the size of the resulting DNG. I have had 35mb NEF files come out as 120mb DNG files. Topaz outputs a noticeably smaller TIFF file. Maybe I have something set up wrong but I haven’t seen any mention of the file size in any of the various reviews so far.

[@sturousephoto]

Yes, the files are somewhat larger - a small price to pay I suppose!

[@dunnymonster]

I've been a huge advocate of Topaz AI noise reduction for a few years but the new Adobe denoise has been a gamechanger for me in terms of workflow. Whilst overall I've been very happy with Topaz to date there's no getting away from the fact that you really have to be careful dialing it in. Likewise I've encountered artifacts as well. My other major gripe with Topaz is that to get the absolute best results I've had to feed it my raw file directly into the standalone app. My prefered option would be to launch via LR but I can only go this route after the file has been converted into a .TIFF file. Even going direct into Topaz with my Raw file gives me a rather funky coloured proprietary.DNG file. My workflow consists of applying a linear profile to all my raw files to give me the best starting point in terms of shadow and highlight recovery. I cannot apply my linear profile to the .DNG that comes out of Topaz's standalone app. I can of course do this prior to sending my image via the Topaz plugin but I dont feel the results are as good when the program has a converted TIFF. Combine my ability to linearise my image and still have noise reduction applied directly to my raw file in addition to the results being excellent and I'm now at the point where honestly I no longer need or use Topaz Denoise AI. If Adobe add a bit more flexibilty than the simple zero to one hundred slider I can see the likes of Topaz and other noise reduction apps going the way of the Dodo. Heaven help them if Adobe also add a sharpen AI tool in the future too! 😮

[@IanDavidBrown]

Very useful tutorial. I have been using Topaz Denoise but its an older version, so I will give this a go. Thanks again Stuart

[@sturousephoto]

Thank you! Try it out, you’ll be amazed how good it is.

[@cameraman655]

I certainly hope this will be added to the Mobile version soon.

[@pauljohnson2461]

Hi Stuart another great spot, just to clarify in the workflow, I am assuming you would suggest to denoise in Lightroom, before moving to Photoshop to edit and tidy up and apply sharpening process, as in your original video. Where we would have used Topaz AI from Photoshop before sharpening.

[@sturousephoto]

Hi Paul, Yes that’s correct, that’s the workflow I’m using now - Lr basic adjustments, Lr DeNoise, Final Lr adjustments then into Ps for a high pass sharpening method then saving back into Lr. Then, sometimes I take it a step further by dodging and burning.