Lightroom 4 - rendering noise differently to Adobe RAW?

So I've been playing around with Lightroom 4 and whilst I like what its giving me I can't help but feel that its doing something odd to my RAWs. Specifically with respect to the noise control it seems to be rendering a much more harsh and grainy texture as opposed to a smoother image that I've grown used to seeing when editing in Elements 6. I know its supposed to be the same RAW processing software powering both, but something, either a setting or an option or a native difference, is giving me differing results depending on which I use.

Interestingly as well, when messing around between the programs, when I pulled a RAW shot out of lightroom (without noise reduction) and into Elements and then ran it through Neat Image I had to tweak several settings to get a good clean noise reduction from it - otherwise it created strange artifacts and swirls around random points of noise - again something I've never had a problem with with plain Elements RAW processing.

I've also spotted that this grainyness increases whenever I take a RAW processed originally in Elements and then converted (the ! you have new processing options click convert) for the new lightroom software.


So is there a way to reduce this increase in harsh noise grain in Lightroom 4 (ideally without having to apply its own noise reduction capabilities). I've tries nosing around the develop tab, but can't see anything that is directly standing out as the controlling tool over this.

I don't know what version of ACR you have in PSE 6, but I think it is old enough that it is ACR 5. With the introduction of ACR 6 and LR 3 (July 2010) Adobe completely changed their RAW conversion engine. Whereas previously the conversion algorithms were tuned to produce a relatively smooth rendering, with Process 2010 it was decided to go for a more detailed (and inevitably more noisy) conversion and to concurrently improve the NR function, thus empowering the user to set his preferred "smoothness". Although the Luminance NR default is 0, you may want to change it to default to 5 or 10. You can also try reducing the Detail slider in Sharpening from its default 25.

The main additional factor added by LR 4 (process 2012) is that the Clarity tool is much more powerful. Since Clarity increases local contrast to make detail more visible, it will also make noise more visible. Use with caution.

Ahh many thanks Tzalman!
That certainly explains the jump in difference I'm seeing as well as why I couldn't seem to change it through the settings by setting them to 0 values. I'll have a play around with the default values, its normally something I never really touched in the RAW stage with elements (save to enable 25 on colour noise removal I think), though it appears a little adjustment here in Lightroom will help - or at least give me results I'm more used to working with.

The tip about the changes to the clarity slider is also great, thanks very much.

Overread wrote in post #14051653
The tip about the changes to the clarity slider is also great, thanks very much.

Apparently the design team decided they may have exaggerated the Clarity in the Beta, because they say they have reined it back in the final release version, although if you want you can still push it pretty hard without getting halo artifacts like in LR3.