high ISO NR, Canon RAW vs Lightroom

have a question, I'm still playing with the 7D that I got a few days ago, and wanted to know what do you guys recommend for Noise Reduction on High ISO pics?

I took some pics in low lighting at 6400 and 12800 iso, and there was considerable noise (red dots everywhere, etc). I use Lightroom for the most part, but a few folks have told me that the new Canon RAW software that comes with the 7D has a better NR feature.

any insights would be appreciated.

Preferences vary between people -- install DPP and try it out for yourself! Also, programs like Noise Ninja offer LR-compatible functions.

The one downside about any such things is that you end up with something other than a Raw file to deal with, assuming you want to continue to manage things in LR. That's what keeps me doing pretty much everything in LR except for special projects.

The jury is still out on this one and likely to remain out for several months. That is because Lightroom 3 is now in public beta but the new, and they claim better, N.R. is still incomplete. What is operative looks promising, however. So I'd say that at the present time DPP is better than LR 2 but that might change.

Sharpening (and NR) in LR.

I'd leave the luminance NR slider in LR alone, unless you *really* need it. Also; be careful with the chroma NR slider.

Play with the "detail" and "masking" slider for sharpening first, so you don't sharpen the noise.

DPP's NR is different. Chroma NR works okay, and leaves more detail then LR sometimes, but it also leaves "white speckles" (which you can easily get rid of in Photoshop if you have that)

René,
It doesn't matter when you move the sliders, the order in which sharpening and n.r. are applied is entirely determined by the (unalterable) internal workflow.

Hahahaha. I know. I meant "first" as: "try what you can do with those, because it is better not to have to use NR at all".

Also, getting the detail and masking right first, may cause you to use a lower NR setting later.

Try this program called neat image. Its pretty good.

Use Canon DPP. You can go nuts with the chroma noise reduction, crank it all the way if needed. The images will have a pleasing look usually. Be careful with the luminance noise slider as increasing it kills detail.

For images where the highest quality is needed process without NR in DPP and then use custom made neat image profiles.