Adobe Lightroom Classic
l £9.98 as part of the monthly Adobe Photography Plan l www.adobe.com
Adobe Lightroom Classic is the go-to image organiser and editor for many photographers. While it facilitates importing, keywording and cataloguing of images as well as global and local adjustment, it doesn’t support layers.
Lightroom Classic’s noise reduction tools are found in the Detail section of the Develop control panel, under the Sharpening controls. There are three controls for the two types of noise and as in Affinity Photo, the luminance noise controls sit above the chroma noise controls, but it’s best to tackle the chroma noise first.
If you have the main preview filling the centre part of the screen, you can use the small window above the sharpening controls to see a magnified view of a small section at 100%. Alternatively you can enlarge the main image.
By default the Color slider in the Noise Reduction section is set to 25. Dragging the control left reduces the degree of noise reduction so that more coloured speckling appears. To find the best setting, move the Color control all the way to 0 and then slowly move it to the right until the colour noise just disappears.
Next, use the ‘Detail and Smoothness’ controls to refine the colour noise reduction. Increasing the Detail value enhances the detail but can bring back some of the noise, while increasing the Smoothness helps to reduce the visibility of some coloured speckling.
When you’re happy with the chroma noise, use the Luminance slider to take out some of the remaining noise. Be careful not to push this too far to the right as you’ll lose image detail. However, you may be able to bring some back with the Detail slider. Finally, if you’ve lost some contrast, use the Contrast control to give it a boost.
It can take a while to find settings that you’re happy with and you may find yourself adjusting backwards and forwards, not always seeing a great deal of difference in the impact of some of the controls.