SAn wrote:... user number is the most objective measure of quality
That would fall almost squarely under the definition of the
argumentum ad populum logical fallacy; the popularity of an idea doesn't necessarily imply (much less prove) its truth, and indeed this is quite often not the case.
I've tested several NR tools and participated in discussions about them, and while I can't claim to have carefully measured either of them (the effectiveness of each tool, or its popularity), it's been my observation that there are tools far more popular than their effectiveness would merit, and others far
less popular than that.
Among the first would be tools like Noise Ninja and Nik DFine; they're far for completely worthless, mind you, yet IMO Noise Ninja is slightly but consistently behind Neat Image in terms of effectiveness, and DFine doesn't even come close. Still, they're both seemingly as popular as Neat Image, especially Noise Ninja. Why? I don't know, but I suspect it has to do with name or brand recognition ("Noise Ninja" is a cool name, and Nik Software seems to be a software subsidiary company of Nikon, or something along those lines).
On the other hand, there are tools such as Topaz DeNoise, PictureCooler and GreyCstoration, among others, that doesn't seem to be nearly as known and used, yet if you try them, it's somewhat difficult not to see that they can yield impressive results, just as good -if not better- than Neat Image. So why aren't they as popular? Again, a variety of reasons: some of them are beginning to gain steam (such as Topaz's), but they're still relatively new, and therefore not popular yet; others may be somewhat hampered by hardly marketable names, complicated and pet-project-like interfaces (GreyCstoration) or quite simply sheer lack of marketing abilities (PictureCooler).
In fact, about the only two NR tools that seem to have gained every bit the recognition they inherently deserve, are Neat Image and Noiseware.
