Neat Video & Neat Image community

I am trying to build a profile from the calibration target and am working with a raw linear camera profile in Lightroom. I was wondering if there is a best practice for this. Also, is it better to apply sharpening and color noise reduction in LR or better to leave that until Photoshop? Another question, is a percentage range for quality in the 90s something that you really don’t have to worry about too much? In Ver. 8 of Neat Image I would often get in the high 90s or 100 on some of my profiles but in Ver. 9 I am often getting lower 90s. One difference that might be a factor is that I shot the Ver. 8 profiles off of a printed calibration image and in Ver. 9 I am photographing it from the computer screen. And last question, as I understand it (AP) in the match means that the match is 100%. Please let me know if that isn’t the case. Thanks.

Regarding best practices, I would recommend to send regular gamma corrected images to Neat Image for profiling and processing.

It is best to make as few changes to the original image data as possible to not make the job the filter more difficult. This will also make the profile management easier because you will not need to keep track of those adjustments taking place before noise analysis and reduction as those adjustments may change the properties of the noise. It is usually easier to do that after noise reduction.

The quality values may change from version to version but I would not worry about lower vs high 90s. That is very good level in either case. You can of course try to use a printed target for comparison but as long as you do not make obvious mistakes (like shooting in-focus or including some details in the primary analysis area), you will be fine.

Yes, (AP) in the Match field means perfect match because the profile has been built using this very image.

Vlad