Do I sharpen then reduce noise

[Rachelsne]

or reduce noise then sharpen?

I do both as the final part of the editing process but Whats the best way?

 

[Overread]

I would be interested in this as well. At first I would unsharpen then remove noise as the sharpening would add noise, but now I prefer to remove nosie and then sharpen. Sometimes if I apply heavy sharpening I will run noise removal again to get back some lost details.

 

[Atropine]

I've asked myself the same question and the solution I came to is that the noise reduction should be made first. I use Neat Image plugin in PS and have made profiles for my cameras and I guess that these presets work best (more consistently) if the photo is untouched.

This is only my own conclusion, more input would be nice!

 

[Alex_B]

reduce noise, sharpen later!

if you sharpen first, the noise also gets more pronounced, and hence you need usually a stronger noise reduction after that, which will kill some detail in the image and un-sharpen it in a sense.

sharpening is always the very last thing you do.

 

[Garbz]

I have to wonder why so many people are interested yet haven't tried something that would literally take 5 minutes to test...

I had this question a while back too. As Alex said sharpening makes noise much more pronounced. If you reduce the noise you can have more latitude with the sharpening threshold to not increase the noise.