In general, you'll want to start with luminance noise reduction. Topaz DeNoise 5 helps with this by providing a Luma channel preview which masks out the color information and makes it easer to see the luminance noise. Working from a midtone, use the strength slider to reduce the visible noise to an acceptable level. Next, you'll move to a shadow area and work with the Adjust Shadow control, and then finish with the highlights (highlight noise is not common and you may find that you use this control seldom).

After making the luminance noise adjustments, use the Detail Adjustment controls to recover any details lost in the noise reduction process. Now, switch the preview back to RGB mode and look for any color noise problems – typically seen as red or blue spots in the image. Topaz DeNoise 5 also offers Red and Blue preview modes to assist with this part of the process. Start with Red and then move to the Blue adjustment. If you have large areas of color problems, you can use the Clean Color control to restore your image.

Finally, go to the Banding noise if you see any signs of banding in the image to clean this up. The last step is to correct the black levels with the Correct Black Level slider. This will remove the haze from your corrected image and restore a solid black point to the shadows.

Conclusion

Overall, I found Topaz DeNoise 5 to be the most logical and easiest to use of the noise reduction applications I've tried.  The ability to correct for black levels, and fine detail restoration is very good. Performance has improved greatly in this latest release. DeNoise 5 works with both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Photoshop CS5 on Mac and Windows systems. If you use any of the other Topaz plug-ins the UI will be instantly familiar to you, making it easy to get up and running.

I've long been a fan of Noiseware, but with Topaz DeNoise 5 I'm a convert. The quality of noise reduction and level of detail retained beats anything else I've used, and the performance is excellent in both 32 bit and 64 bit modes. I like the ability to use presets and create snapshots, and the support from Topaz has been excellent. At $79, DeNoise 5 is excellent value. Purchased as part of a bundle with Adjust, Simplify, Detail, ReMask, Clean, and DeJpeg the price is $179. DeNoise works with Photoshop versions back to 7, and a free Fuzion plu-in is available to enable Lightroom compatibility.

Ratings (out of 5)
Features	4.5
Ease-of-use	5
Value for money	5

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