What is, IYHO, the BEST noise cleaning software...dont take the price into account... quality wise only... to answer this question you must have compare software algorithm with the same pictures...
I know or have used:
Noise Ninja
Neat Image
FredMiranda Action ISOx
Grain Surgery
Kodak GEM
Adobe CS2 noise reduction filter
Tell me you best software to get the better quality/noise ratio
I have used NoiseNinja, Neat Image and Grain surgery.
I still can't figure out well the Grain surgery comands. But it's ok anyway. But I think the Noise Ninja and the Neat image will do the best results withought much trouble. for example I do autoprofile image in Noise Ninja and then aply the filter and voilá, it's done. The result is not so intense like Neat Image but it's very good and simple to work with. But Neat Image is certainly one of the best to remove noise, in high amounts, but it's also the more dangerous one too. If you aren't carefuill you'll end up with an artificial image, almoust plastic look. But the options are very wide and there are several pre-defined types of noise removing ations acording to the type of noise that is in the file, but you'll have to choose it on your one because it can't figure out what type it is.
The more powerfull: Neat Image
The more simple to work/best results easy: Noise Ninja
I would like to see here not only the one people use but also how and when you use it.
For example my therad on Vodafone Freestyle MX Lisbon almost every image was treated with Noise Ninja and are at iso 1600. Take a look.
I'm finding that Photoshop CS2's noise reduction filter is very good and quite configurable, especially in the advanced mode.
Haven't even touched NeatImage since the upgrade
Didn't see Noiseware on your list. I used the Community (freeware) edition for longest time but moved up to pro for batch processing and exif retention.
Noise Ninja hands down....I've tried Neatimage and its results are too plastic.
The default settings for NeatImage are overly aggressive. The NeatImage interface is also not the easiest.
That said, once you get used to the inteface and how to tweak away from defalut behavior, the results are second to none. It is slower than some of the others, however. That's a near-zero impact for me though, the difference is a few seconds, and for as often as I need to use it is a non issue.
I use Neat Image. I don't know one tenth of what the settings are, but you can watch the image preview as you tweak so I just fidget til I get what I want.
