Sharpen or denoise first?!

Hi all! This dilemma has been bugging me for ages; is there a definitive best practice in the application order of denoise (neatimage) and (smart) sharpen?! Very interested to hear answers!

Thanks,
Steve

Everyone's workflow is different, but I generally reduce noise early and sharpen late.
In fact, sometimes I hold sharpening to the very last stage, and only sharpen portions of an image, rather than the entire imae. ... It all depends on what effect I am trying to accomplish.

Conventional wisdom might say to sharpen first.

but consider that you have up to three phases of sharpening (capture, creative, output).

The best way of removing noise, however, is to use a mask. If you select the noisy part of the image (usually the background), you'll preserve the detail in the subject to a greater efficiency.

I remove noise first then sharpen as the very last step. I don't want to sharpen noise in the image.

Why not try it yourself? That's what I did, and I ended up with a slight preference for sharpening followed by Noiseware. It probably depends on how you're using the noise reduction and sharpening, which is why I suggest you try for yourself. In my case I apply only a little noise reduction, and have Noiseware do just enough sharpening not to soften the image.

FWIW, my workflow goes like this:

Noiseware
Capture sharpening
Retouch
Black and white point adjustments
Colour cast adjusments and corrections
Contrast
Creative sharpening
Any other modifications
Output sharpening


Certain stages are flexible, and it can vary between images, but that's a fairly accurate representation of my approach to PP

I tend to leave sharpening to the very last step.

Thanks for all the very enlightening replies, everyone

me,lordv and dalantech all denoise 1st.i then use leveles if needed.contrast.shadow​s,highlights.then sharpen usm 100-1-0 then save jpeg.i only sharpen once.

just sharpen at the end, don't bother with anti-noise filters..

Why would you say that Bobster?

I'm always very suspicious of "always do this, never do that" advice, because it completely neglects to consider that each image requires its own tailored approach to processing.

Why would you never remove noise from an image, and why would you only ever sharpen at the end?

Pete wrote in post #5903338
Conventional wisdom might say to sharpen first.

but consider that you have up to three phases of sharpening (capture, creative, output).

The best way of removing noise, however, is to use a mask. If you select the noisy part of the image (usually the background), you'll preserve the detail in the subject to a greater efficiency.

I agree

You could take that a step further by saying that noise is probably likely to be more dominant in the shadows and darker tones, so use of a luminance mask would confine your NR processing to those areas of the image.

My only issue with sharpening first is that in images with a relatively high degree of noise, especially chroma noise, you are going to exacerbate that with sharpening and potentially generate haloes around the noise pixels, which is why, as a general rule, I'd run some low level NR across an image before sharpening. Of course, care would have to be taken not to remove fine detail from the image in the process, which is where I find Imagenomic Noiseware to be a real lifesaver.

Irreverent wrote in post #5931680
Why would you say that Bobster?

I'm always very suspicious of "always do this, never do that" advice, because it completely neglects to consider that each image requires its own tailored approach to processing.

Why would you never remove noise from an image, and why would you only ever sharpen at the end?

i expose to the right as much as possible, so i have little noise (even @ ISO1600)

and i only sharpen at the end so nasty little supprises don't hit you in the face when processing..

I sharpen first that may increase the noise, then I use noiseware to wipe it all away, leaving a smooth image.