Noise Test

I just finished taking pictures at a friends wedding and started to do what processing I know how to.  (I am bad at learning this part of the process.)  But one important thing that I noticed is since I was using auto ISO, which did help to get most of the shots in focus and without motion blur, I did end up shooting more shots at the max auto ISO setting of 6400.  This was not that bad but I did see much more noise and I would like to correct that.

With that being said, a friend of mine swears by Lightroom 5 at this point, we both started with Aperture 3.  I on the other hand have not migrated but I have collected a few other programs.  I found a promotional and was able to get the full version of Corel Aftershot Pro for free.  I figure why not and it has Perfectly Clear and Noise Ninja built into it.  I also picked up the Nik suite along the way to help out Aperture.  And finally I got DxO and am wanting to migrate to it since it also has a lot of lens and perspective corrections.  (So yes I guess I am trying everything else except Lightroom.)

So that is my setup.  From the desire to edit the wedding pictures, I figured I better do a simple comparison.  I say simple since I still do not know how to use any of these programs to their full potential thus I wanted to see what they could do on their own.  In that, I took a macro shot of a cactus flower that I had and just did noise reduction on the same RAW file and here are the results.

I only upload medium jpegs and hopefully that will be enough.  When I say default, this is basically enabling aka turning on that tool and allowing the default settings to do their stuff.  It is also interesting that the exports from Aperture did not transfer my Exif information.  Also the Aperture has a little dust repair work, but not exposure.

Coral (Perfectly Clear and Noise Ninja)

DxO (Prime default)

Aperture (Default)

NIK (Dfine default)

My conclusion: I like the DxO best.  But I really, really like the work-flow of Aperture.  I just wish Apple would update the tech in it.  (It has been nice though not having to buy multiple versions and getting pretty good update all along.)