When To Apply Neat Image?

If you are using Neat Image for noise reduction and you plan to reduce the image size should NI be applied before you reduce or after?

I'm certainly no expert but logic would dictate to me that you get the noise out as early as possible in the editing process. When you reduce an image data is lost. I am pretty sure that the algorithms that reduce an image wont be examining it to see which data may be good data and which is noise (that is the job of the NR). So resizing with noise risks having some of that noise remain while good data is lost. Better to get the image looking as good as possible first before doing any major retouching or resizing.

Using DPP and PS/Gimp

FWIW, I usually run NI immediately after making any large tonal adjustments, which are almost always done in P.S.

If the 'raw' TIF is clearly noisy, I'll run NI before further P.P.

If noise isn't an obvious issue, I'll skip any/all noise filtering. The less PP, the better.

Ok thank you.

One of the attractive features of NI is the ability to build preset noise profiles for each ISO level of your camera, to identify them by ISO and to let NI automatically match them to images. - especially when running a batch clean-up of images that have differet ISOs. Because editing will change the amount of visible noise, the profiles should be made with minimal processing before hand, or at least a fixed routine processing that can be repeated each time.

FWIW, I never found the ISO-based profiles to be much use. Noise is highly variable, increasing with shutter duration and ambient temperature, things NI knows nothing about. If a picture looks gritty, I just take a minute to build an image specific profile and go from there.