I suppose this is more a comment than a question, but anyway.
I do a fair amount of work with digital Infrared photography. One thing I almost always have to do in order to get workable images is histogram correction. Even properly exposed IR images usually clump up in the middle of the intensity histogram, leaving a good 30-40 values worth of dymanic range empty on either end. (i.e. pixel intensity can be anywhere from 0 - 255, and IR exposures usually have pixel intensities in the 30-210 range). This leaves a 'choppy' histogram, since it simply multiplies each pixel intensity by a computed value and rounds to the nearest integer. You basically wind up with the empty pixel intensities being spread evenly through the histogram, instead of at either end.Anyway, one thing I've noticed using NeatImage is that, when I run NeatImage on a shot that has been level corrected, the 'choppy' histogram becomes smooth again. I realize you can't say *too* much about the internal workings of Neat Image, but would you expect such results from your noise reduction algorithm? It's a nice side benefit, in addition to cleaning the noise out of the high ISO, long exposure shots needed to get through a Hoya R72.
