Editing: Goodbye Topaz, hello Lightroom AI Noise Reduction

You may have heard me bang on before about how much I dislike Topaz DeNoise. It’s not that it’s a bad product (although I’ve experienced many scenarios where it’s done a very botchy job) but it’s the the inconsistency, over smoothing and large file sizes when using external editors in Lightroom that kill my soul a little. The amazing news is that Lightroom has stepped up to the plate with AI Noise Reduction which I can only say is a f#&king miracle. Honestly, I put it to the test with an image shot early in the morning on our Bright Bootcamp. The original is noisy, necessarily so to keep the shutter up but with 2 clicks in Lightroom it’s basically wound the ISO back to 100. Check out the results below, this tool is going to be ddaannggeerrrous. My advice is to get excited about the tool, but more importantly don’t lean on it too hard. It’s there to get you out our a bind, not there so you can just shoot everything at ISO100,000 and ‘fix it in post’.