>>2954235Well i almost never touche the noise reduction other than the default amount of chroma noise reduction. Although if it's a high iso image 800-1600 that i've had to push a bit brighter i tend to completely turn off any sharpening, i might do just a tad of luma noise reduction and most often kinda try and hide it by adding a bit of soft grain on top since it's more uniform.
Also i might just do two versions of the image one with enough noise reduction to smooth out the shadows but adding grain on top, and another with no noise reduction and no sharpening etc, then just blend those two layers to let the noise reduction only affect the dark portions of the image.
However. Best way to minimize noise is just to process differently. I usually start off in camera raw and i pick the WB i want, i turn the contrast down as much as possible, i turn the whites down as far as possible, i turn the blacks up as far as possible, i don't touch the highlight or shadow slider. Make sure i'm using the adobeRGB profile or prophoto, whichever is required to keep all tones inside the histogram. Load into photoshop, open a levels adjustment layer and move the midpoint right to brighten the image, then i put a slight S curve on top for contrast.
This usually gives a very natural looking base to work off, with very subdued colors with good color transitions etc. If you want more tonality you could do with nik Viveza2 and add some on various places but i like to keep it kinda subtle a lot of the times. Other times i might go a bit crazy though. I'm not very consistent.
