Adobe new Denoise AI in Camera Raw Does it work ? 19 April 2023

This is a crop from the original EOS R10 raw photo at ISO 25600 with no noise reduction

Does it work ?    Short answer- Yes.

Is it any good ?   Short answer – Yes

In recent times Adobe has been lagging behind other providers of noise reduction software. In particular DXO Pure Raw and Topaz Denoise AI have been found by many users to deliver superior results with noisy, high ISO files.  

Adobe has offered [Raw details] and [Super resolution] to a largely unimpressed user group. My experiments with [Super resolution] find it to be of little use in practice with most images.

So Adobe really needed to come up with their own solution to noise reduction using AI and do it sooner rather than later. In the interests of keeping my workflow as simple as reasonably possible, I made a decision some time ago to wait for Adobe to rise to the AI challenge rather than delve into the DXO or Topaz offerings.

Today, 19 April 2023, I installed Camera Raw 15.3 with the new Adobe Denoise AI feature and ran a few initial tests.

I used a Canon EOS R10 camera, a model not known for brilliant high ISO capability,  in low light at ISO 25,600. Unprocessed Raw files display hideous levels of luminance noise at this ISO setting.

I used a single image, processed first using standard Adobe sharpening and noise reduction in Camera Raw. Next I tried the new Denoise AI setting in the Detail tab in Camera Raw, at 33% and 50% on the amount slider provided.

My first finding is that the new Denoise AI in ACR delivers a much better result than I can achieve with the standard adjustment sliders in the Detail tab.

I found that in this particular example Denoise AI at 50% produces a result which I find overly “plasticky” looking. The next version at 33% looks more photographically realistic to me.

Summary of my initial findings

Adobe has at last stepped up to the task of digital image noise reduction using artificial intelligence. Initial results look promising. More testing is required but it appears Adobe is back in the noise reduction game and not a moment too soon.

Users will soon start to publish comparisons between the new Adobe Denoise AI and DXO and Topaz and perhaps others. We shall see but would not be surprised if these tests show that Adobe still has some catch-up to do. If so, I guess that will come in due course as the programming becomes more refined.  

ACR Denoise AI at 50%

ACR Denoise AI at 33%

Standard noise reduction in ACR best result