Markag wrote:
I'm a Z7 shooter and seldom or maybe never, shot above ISO1600. I've copied and processed a dozen NEF files using just adobe and then Topaz for noise. I honestly can't tell the difference. So much so I figured I must be doing something wrong but try as I might, Topaz doesn't do it for me. Also, off topic certainly, but I'm the hog that would like to replace Adobe products altogether because of what it does to my PC. I've downloaded and compared many products but I always come back to Adobe. Capture One seems to come the closest but they want you to purchase additional plug-ins to perform functions, (focus stacking), that Adobe already does.
I'm a Z7 shooter and seldom or maybe never, shot a... (
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Markag, this is probably the start of a separate topic, but here's a quick example to address your post above.
I'd think you should be confident in shooting to ISO-6400 with a more modern Z7 than my EOS 5DIII that I try to limit to ISO-5000. The attachment below was developed from Lightroom v6 and PSE-10 using a recent image posted to Flickr from last weekend in Chicago, but not used in any posts to UHH.
What I wanted to show was LR's default processing when any RAW file is imported. There's a default total sharpening amount applied and a default Color Noise Reduction (with zero Luminance NR). My own experience with Sony and Canon EOS RAW files is that images in the range ISO-100 to say ISO-1600 need mostly Luminance NR rather than Color NR, and total NR much less severe than LR's default values applied to all RAW imports.
In the attachment below, I exported uncropped full-resolution images using history steps and then cropped a 500x500 pixel box of the same location of each image version, merging onto the top of the crop size of final version of this image (1709x1069px, down from the original 5706x3840).
To describe a bit further,
Box 1 is the LR export with the import defaults for sharpening and Color NR. The background canvas is the same #1 image
Box 2 is an LR virtual copy with the Sharpening and Color NR set to zero. The difference is subtle, the difference is visual when I turn the layers off and on in PSE, although you likely can't see an obvious difference between boxes 1 & 2 (I can't).
Box 3 is the edited version of the image I posted to Flickr after just LR processing. This image was nothing 'special' and I didn't take the addition effort to run it through Topaz DeNoise.
Box 4 This is the Topaz DeNoise v6 result of the same position as boxes 1,2,3. I'll probably replace the LR version in Flickr with this improved version.
What I find with Topaz is the DeNoise software is much better at cleaning the background details than LR. Therefore, my approach is edit as normal in LR, including sharpening and NR, either to completion of the image, or using the same settings 'as complete' and then process the uncropped image with the LR edits in Topaz DeNoise. I tweak the DeNoise settings to focus the de-noise effort on the background. There's a Topaz 'slider' for highlights that I set to minimum. I re-apply the final crop when re-importing the Topaz results back into LR.
Hopefully, the difference in box 4 is obvious compared to the other three crops. You should be seeing the same / similar in your work. When you say you don't, we'd really need to look at specific images, both original NEFs and your edited results, something that is definitely it's separate discussion and likely to need a dropbox for the file sharing.
To 'see' the details you need to launch the attachment into a new browser window, or download to your computer. Then, you need to click to the 1:1 pixel level details. At the 1:1 pixel level details is how you should be reviewing your Topaz results too.