No, this goes back years. Whereas in ACR’s early days, you needed different slider values for every ISO, these days it’s smarter. 25 on 6400 ISO automatically applies more noise reduction than on 100 ISO without you needing to do a thing.
This allowed me to set the ISO stops back to factory of 1:3 that includes all the stops in between and now I can use Auto ISO. You set you preferred ISO values from 0 the the highest one you want and the plug-in applies NR logarithmically for ISO value. It will do this for hundreds if files in seconds.
Victorias comment implies that Adobe changed the algorithm to be ISO sensitive. Does this post-date the process you describe of applying more for higher ISO?
My work tends to fall into either night/indoor sports, or daylight sports, so end up in groups of either extreme - high ISO, or low ISO. Yet at present I just use the same default value unless I notice (as in a tight crop, or faces in shadow) more noise than usual.
Seemingly irrelevant comment: I liked texture when it came out a lot.
Now though after looking at this discussion and several daylight shots, I am wondering if why I liked texture so much is that it put back some of the over-smoothing that my default noise reduction was removing. Here is an example zoomed 2:1. I've always liked 2:1 for viewing sharpness and noise settings because it's easier to see, and you go just a bit too far to "visibly crunchy" and then it tends to look right at 1:1. This is at base ISO (100) and on the left is 20 NR and the right I changed it to zero.
I think the NR was excessive on the left. It looks good at 2:1 -- but that means it is too smooth at 1:1 or smaller. Interestingly adding about +10 texture puts back most of the crunchiness (technical term
) that NR took away. Though I like the impact on the background smoothing, and now wish NR had a mask (or inverse mask) like sharpening.
Here's the same shot with zero NR and zero texture on the left, and 20 NR and 10 Texture on the right. They are not quite identical but you can see in comparison to the left shot above how both have a bit of crunchiness that at 1:1 becomes sharper or more crisp edges. Makes me wonder if texture "fixed" a problem I was creating myself, at least near base ISO. Though if I look quite closely I like the right one better, the sharpness is a bit stronger on the face detail and lighter on the background which is what one would want.
This is a Sony A7Riv, ISO 200, 1600th at 200mm and and also viewed 2:1 (given it's a 61mpix camera that means it's a really, really tight crop).
Anyway, I'll quit hijacking the thread, but interesting discussion, thanks.