Should you apply AI noise reduction in Lightroom Classic before or after editing?

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Should you apply AI noise reduction in Lightroom Classic before or after editing? When you ask Adobe that question, the answer is that it is best done first. I wondered whether it makes a difference if you do not. A reason to try it out.

When do you apply noise reduction? I think the answer is when there is too much noise. Or when too much noise is created by the editing. Raising the shadows, for example, causes an increase in noise.

So you only notice that there is too much noise once the editing has been done. That is when it is time to filter out the noise. The AI noise reduction in Lightroom Classic is very effective at this. However, if you listen to Adobe, you should apply AI noise reduction before you start editing.

Adobe will undoubtedly have a good reason for recommending this. Still, I refuse to remove noise from a photo straight away if it is not (yet) visible. So I wondered whether there is a difference between applying AI noise reduction before and after editing. Time for a test.

The test is simple. I apply AI noise reduction before I start editing, which produces a separate file. I then apply a synchronised edit to these two images. After that, I apply noise reduction to the edited raw file using the same settings.

Below you can see the differences once again, but with a different photo from the one in the video. Or rather, you can see that with this photo too, there is no difference in the result.

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