Generating Rain-Like Noise In Strongly Adjusted Images

[Boatman]

I'm seeing situations using Lr4 where strong modifications in exposure or contrast adjustments cause a grainy pattern in the image. This pattern looks like streaking rain, but is not rain, it is something I am creating when I make my adjustments. In most cases, backing off on my adjustments will remove the problem, but I may also lose the effect I am trying to get. I'll acknowledge that in most cases where this happens, I'm pushing the image pretty hard, often significantly desaturating a particular color or going to black and white.

Relative to black and white images, where significant color shifts may be wanted to increase or decrease contrast in a particular color range, would NIK Silver EFEX or other specialized software package yield better results than Lr4 or am I just trying to get something our of an image that isn't there to begin with?

[Carl in Louisiana]

Silver efex pro will convert color to B & W very well and gives you plenty of options to be creative. I also use Dfine 2.0 for any noise in the image. I have never tried converting to B & W in LR4. Just go to the Nik Software site and download the free trial and see for yourself and watch the tutorials they have on using the software very good indeed, I think it was money well spent on my part. I also bought the Complete Collection for lightroom 4 as it was just about $40.00 or so difference from just silver efex pro. Hope this helps you out some.