Adobe has released the update to Lightroom 1.2 with a number of improvements and support for more cameras like the Canon EOS 40D. One thing that caught our eye was better noise reduction for Bayer sensor cameras. What this may sound like an oddball technical phrase, this applies to a lot of cameras such as Canon’s and Nikons. We wanted to take a look at this feature and see what kind of a difference it would make.

We started by taking a picture of my wife’s scrapbooking room as there is a lot of subtle colors and light and dark spots, at a high ISO setting, this is sure to create a lot of noise in the image. While high ISO settings can help take pictures in low light conditions, you do add more noise (distracting artifacts) into the image. While sometimes the noise is ok, other times it can render the photograph unusable.

For this example, we used a Canon EOS 20D on 3200 ISO and used a tripod to get a good shot. Click on the image to zoom in and see the noise that is in the image. This is most noticable on the plastic paper holders and in the gradient ares between the bookshelf and the basket. While there are good programs that will help remove noise, getting good noise reduction from Lightroom would save use a lot of extra time during the workflow process.

In the second example, we kicked up the noise reduction in Lightroom 1.2 to see how well it would work. Its almost impossible to see it in the thumbnail but when you zoom in, you can clearly see that the amount of noise is dramatically reduced. This is certainly a top-notch noise reduction system now.

If you aren’t using Lightroom as part of your workflow, you should check it out, its an awesome product that reduces the amount of time you need to spend in Photoshop as Lightroom is much faster for most of your processing needs.