A few days ago Lightroom received an update in which the most notable feature was the noise reduction tool to automatically remove noise in our photographs, it is a tool driven by artificial intelligence as far as I understand and today I want to show you a bit of the result and finally my opinion about it.
To do this test I took advantage that I had a trip to the town I always go to, and on the way there is a place I like to get to because of the beautiful view of the landscape, it is called the Mirador del Aguila and I must tell the truth about the place, taking the pictures here is much more difficult than it seems, in fact seeing the landscape as layers each one of them has a different color temperature, so the white balance can get a little crazy or maybe I just lack experience and nothing else.
But well, I really wanted to get to take pictures and since the sky was cloudy I decided it was a good time, the truth is that to take this first picture I could have changed lens but there I was, in a hurry to take the pictures and get back to the road before it got dark, I know that to take this panoramic type picture I should have made other frames but well, as I say I was in a hurry and I did not think well at the time.
Here are the two photographs I used for the panorama.
And another picture of the place, I can't see the fire but I can see the smoke, the sad thing is that all over the state there are fires and they never seem to end.
By the way these are the settings I used to take the pictures.
I took a small portion of the pictures and used automatic noise removal, it is a pity that due to the compression when uploading the pictures it is likely that the quality is not completely noticeable.
And then the time it took to do the noise removal process, which in total was almost 12 minutes and consumed all the resources of my PC, the truth is that with each new update Lightroom becomes heavier and heavier forcing me to have to buy a new PC with better features.
Now the same picture but removing the noise by myself, a process that took me less than 5 seconds to perform and did not consume so many pc resources.
To finish I will tell you my opinion, honestly there is some difference in the two processes, on the one hand removing noise automatically does a good job, it really preserves detail in the photograph and can help you to improve your photographs that for some reason have noise, but it is a feature that I would not use much because of the time and resources it consumes to do the process, besides I doubt that someone will do this to each and every one of his photographs, it is a specific tool designed for specific situations.
On the other hand removing noise manually is a simple and fast process, although comparing the two results when removing noise manually causes a blur that can be a little annoying at the end, it is best to make use of all our accessories and plan better photographs, although from experience I know that we can not always make use of the flash or tripod, that's when removing noise automatically can be of great help, but as I say, it is not something I will use in all my photographs, only in those that really may be necessary.