Lightroom 4- Incredible High-ISO noise handling

[canetsbe]

Just want to see if you all have the same love for the way RAW/DNG files are handled in LR4, ESPECIALLY anything shot at 1600 or greater. Totally makes those files that were unusable before perfectly usable. If you want to add two iso stops to your camera without actually DOING anything to said camera while also improving the noise structure to one that is beautifully grain-like, GET THIS SOFTWARE!

I came from Photoshop CS4 originally, then to LR3 and was floored by how much better the handling is. LR4 then came around and totally just killed it. Thank god for the free download from Leica, otherwise I may have passed on it. I love shooting at night / indoors, and now gone is splotchy color noise and weird pixel artifacting that formerly plagued my files. 3200 on my Leica X1 is perfectly usable, and my VERY new-to-me NEX-7 can look good all the way to 12800 (albeit with an alien-skin b/w conversion.) I was initially a bit hesitant with all the talk about the NEX-7's ISO limitations but those concerns were quickly erased.

Anyhow, just wanted to rave a bit about how much I love LR4. It does what I want in image-processing software - make less work for me to do. If anyone is considering the upgrade, you just need to trust me - it's worth it.

[majid]

A year ago I spoke to Tom Hogarty, the LR product manager at Adobe, also in charge of Adobe Camera RAW among other things, and he mentioned he is a Leica M shooter, as are many members of the team, and they took special pains to make the noise processing as good as they could for the M9 in LR3.