El_Pickerel said:
It just seems to me that applying a lens profile or correcting for distortion / chromatic aberration should be the first thing to do. Then again I'm not 'learned' except for just figuring things out myself so maybe this is not true.

Well, that certainly seems to make sense. I guess I would do lens correction first, too, since that way, the noise reduction wouldn't be further "distorted" by any subsequent "optical correction." I'm not too "learned" in post-processing procedure either. It would be nice to have a workflow "bible" or flowchart to reference. The Nik workflow recommendations are what I've gone by, but they're very general, and only specific to their product line (which doesn't include lens correction).

I have three very good Aperture books which describe the authors' preferences for orders of operation in pretty good, real-world detail, which is very helpful (although Aperture doesn't support lens profiling, unfortunately). I'm sure similar knowledge is available from books written for Lightroom.

For lightroom 3 I turn on the lens correction first. Then I go from top to bottom with sharpening coming before the noise reduction.

El_Pickerel said:
It just seems to me that applying a lens profile or correcting for distortion / chromatic aberration should be the first thing to do.

LR3 can be set to do this, and other things, automatically on import
again in LR as sharpening and noise are in the same "box" and will, to some extent, affect the other. I tend to do both, last
I do use the clarity tool, fairly early on

spraynpray said:
In Lightroom:

I do sharpening last in my work flow and make sure the sharpen for screen is unchecked in the export screen.

As a rule - if you are using Lightroom - you do the actions in the order they are placed from top to bottom in the develop screen.

YMMV.

It just seems to me that applying a lens profile or correcting for distortion / chromatic aberration should be the first thing to do. Then again I'm not 'learned' except for just figuring things out myself so maybe this is not true. Other than applying the lens corrections, I do everything top-to-bottom.

Because your ISO is high and your images are noisy, I wouldn't apply any sharpening, as it will basically counteract the effects of NR on a noisy image. If you use NR heavy enough to remove a big chunk of noise, you're going to kill the remaining resolution in the image. Noise also creates the illusion of more detail than there may be, so it's a somewhat beneficial by-product. Nonetheless better to leave the image(s) relatively noisy than to destroy detail by hammering it with NR.

While this next comment is a bit sarcastic, it's also actually true, hammering an image with NR and then compensating with heavy sharpening will wind you up with an image made with a Canon. ;-)

By the way, there is a multichannel NR plug-in from Topaz, not surprisingly called Denoise, that works very well, albeit requiring conscious effort on your part. If your image or images are pretty noisy, download the 30-day trial at topazlabs and go through the tutorial videos. You may be surprise at how much noise you can reduce while maintaining important detail. Good luck.

I'm with spraynpray but I'm there by accident. When I bought LR, going top-to-bottom seemed like a decent workflow, so that's what I used, but I didn't really think about it. I think I get decent results, so I never contemplated switching.

Hmmmm... Interesting.

Some do NR first and others last.

I guess if the results are good both ways, it doesn't matter then?

1 Noise reduction
2 Everything else
3 Sharpening (adapted for output type).

spraynpray said:
In Lightroom:
I do sharpening last in my work flow and make sure the sharpen for screen is unchecked in the export screen.
As a rule - if you are using Lightroom - you do the actions in the order they are placed from top to bottom in the develop screen.

studio460 said:
According to Nik software, makers of Dfine, noise-reduction should be the very first step in the process. Sharpening should be performed last, specific to final output size. But, some users perform some type of sharpening upon RAW conversion as well.

+1 on both. I use Lightroom & Nik.

I have always heard the proper way is to do your Noise reduction before sharpening. Reason is that the sharpening brings more artifacts "out" and this happens much less noticeably so after NR is applied.

Obviously if you use a Raw converter - you use that first. With Lightroom, I never use a raw converter anymore.

Nik actually has great videos on proper workflow that can be applied even if you do not use their products.

If you are shooting raw you can do it like this: Sharpen lightly with a big radius (~ 1.2) then apply noise reduction, do toning etc. And after you re sized your image to it's final size whatever that would be you can do a stronger sharpening with a small radius, like 0,5ptx.

Be careful when taking images, Lens Defraction and Chromatc Aberation can also effect sharpness and contribute to poor sharpness

According to Nik software, makers of Dfine, noise-reduction should be the very first step in the process. Sharpening should be performed last, specific to final output size. But, some users perform some type of sharpening upon RAW conversion as well.

In Lightroom:

I do sharpening last in my work flow and make sure the sharpen for screen is unchecked in the export screen.

As a rule - if you are using Lightroom - you do the actions in the order they are placed from top to bottom in the develop screen.

YMMV.

I have been trying to do as much "post processing" in the camera at time of exposure as possible. It takes some time and experience to learn what settings you need in certain situations. Of course ISO setting is first, but Active-D Lighting, High ISO NR, and all the customized sub-settings in Picture Control can really help you fine tune the original image to significantly reduce post processing. After learning how much High ISO NR I like, how much contrast and sharpening I like, I seldom have to adjust sharpening or contrast or noise reduction in post processing any more.

rbid are you shooting RAW or jpegs
if RAW as bjrichus says sharpening is the last thing you do

if you are shooting film, again the mask is the last thing you put together

For me, noise reduction is usually the very last thing I do before conversion to jpg format so I can send the image off to whichever person is doing the online work that day.

For some reason web browsers don't seem to like raw files... LOL...

Hello,

Usually I do not post-process my photos, but there are some cases that I forgot to turn down the ISO and they came out noisy.

As far I remember, sharpening is the first step in post processing.

Do you run your noise reduction software first or you run some kind of unsharp-mask first?