Saving JPEG from RAW using PS CC is very patchy (examples attached)

Question

1. Why opening a RAW file in PS CC has more chromatic noise than when opened in LR CC or other CR2 viewers?
2. Saving this RAW file using PS as JPG is worse than the original JPG saved by the camera, with lots of noisy patches. Note: No default Camera Raw 10.0 tweaks had been applied and saved in PS with the highest quality possible

I have read a few threads with slightly around this topic by other people, where mostly the answers were around JPG compression v RAW data etc. But my Q is specific to the workflow where the above situation puts me to deal with the patchy noise during editing which is very counterproductive.

Hope someone can see what is the root cause of this.

I've attached a few screen captures to highlight issue

Answer 1

1. You have different chromatic noise because this chromatic noise is processed with different intensity. You might want to correct the chromatic noise reduction from camera raw, the photoshop plugin that process raw images.
2. IMO your last image (PSCC) has more colors (no flattening), and more details, and is much better than your second image processed in LR, regarding this. All you need to do is to increase your color noise reduction in camera raw. You can do this to a selection of many raw images, when you open them from bridge.

Answer 2

you are comparing the RAW in the PS ACR dialog with the JPEG preview which the Lightroom import dialog displays. once you co plete the import and view the image in Lightrooms develop module, it should look pretty much the same as in PS, as they share the same RAW engine.

To achieve the same level of noise reduction as the camera applies when creating the JPEG thumbnail, use the noise sliders in the develop settings of Lightroom or ACR. Leaving everything on default is just not good enough, they are set for minimal deviation from the "true" data.

Note: you can actually change the defaults. E.g. i have set different noise reduction levels for the various ISO levels of my camera, along with some other tweaks i know i like to apply every time, and saved them as defaults, so the get applied immediately on import.