# SHARPENING : external plug-in Sharpening Pro or Perfect Resize or LR4 ???



## sinarleica (May 21, 2012)

HI 
given the price of each plug'in , what are  the results in the real life of these plug-in compared against LR4 functions :

             Brush + Sharpness ( local adjustment of sharpness) 

            completed with "Detail " "Sharpening" "noise reduction" functions ?


thanks for your  time:focus:


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## clee01l (May 21, 2012)

Sinarieica, welcome to the forum.  FWIW, I have not needed or used a third party sharpening or NR plugin since LR3 came out.


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## JimHess43 (May 21, 2012)

Same here.  I used to have Noise Ninja on my computer.  But it just isn't needed anymore.


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## donoreo (May 22, 2012)

Same here, LR built in.


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## Jimmsp (May 23, 2012)

For my 8x10 in prints and larger, I use Topaz DeNoise.
For simply web viewing, LR NR is generally just fine.


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## madman (May 23, 2012)

I am using the Nik software collection for a couple a weeks now. It includes denoising and sharpening. Since then I set all LR settings to 0 for these functions.
The external software gives more flexibility, specially the sharpening tool, as to WHERE you want to sharpen the image. Something that is missing as fas as I know in LR.


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## gregDT (May 23, 2012)

You can sharpen in LR4 with the Adjustment brush. Likewise you can paint noise and moire reduction as well anywhere on the image. It will mainly depend on how noisy your images are and how much you need to clean them up as to whether you need third party applications. I'm sure bespoke noise reduction applications are better than LR at the job, but there will be an additional cost and extra steps in the work flow as a trade off.. Personally noise reduction in LR works fine for me. I do quite a lot of night photography but as I can shoot from a tripod I don't tend to go above ISO 800 so I see little if any noise in my images. Most of my work ends up on the web or in print at a maximum size of about A4, so a little noise won't really become an issue. If you shoot ISO 3200 and produce 6ft posters then your mileage may differ 

In the final analysis if you're getting the results you want in LR stick with it, but if noise etc is causing issues that you can't fix in LR, take a trial of one of the bespoke noise reduction/sharpening applications . I think most offer free trials?


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