Originally posted by Eric Seavey JohnBee,
Thanks for the suggestions. Where in NoiseNinja I know what I am doing, in Topaz Denoise I was in experimentation mode trying various adjustments.
Eric
Your welcome,
On the issue of experimentation, thinking back, one way that really helped me get familiar with the software was to max out all the sliders. Then, starting with the highlight adjuster, I'd dial things down slider by slider and try and identify what effect each had on the noise with an image.
I ran your original(small sample) through TND5 locally and found that the shadow and highlight sliders were the most effective adjusters at dealing with the background noise. With these adjustements made, I was able to complete NR with an overall strength of about 24, which is fairly good on the detail index.
Another note was where Denoise defaults the Current Black Lever slider at 1, when it should really be zero. Which is an option that should only be used to contend with magenta cast as a result of overexposed shadow recovery.
Also... depending on the severity of image noise, it's often necessary to work on a layer and mask some of the original image back into your final image. In this case, I think the center of the flowers have highlight details that are quite important to the image. Therefore, I'd quickmask(40% perhaps) some of the original detail that back into final scene.
PS. don't forget to diffuse scene with a little image grain(20-35), Otherwise... you'll end-up with color blotching and pattern gradients.