Looking for the best free “noise reduction” software

Hi

I am doing some stock photography and I have been recommended to quite a few noise reduction website's but I would like to find out not only which one is the best overall but also may have the following characteristics.

- is free to download and use.
- Is easy to use.
- Is reliable.

There are probably other questions I have to ask but I cannot think of them just now- so any other information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks a lot Craig

I use Neat Image - it is pretty good, and excellent considering the price (free!!).

http://www.neatimage.com/download.html

Download the demo version. It is not time limited, so it is in effect a free program. The only real limitation is that it will only save in jpeg, although it will read tiffs. I use it on tiff files, save the noise reduced picture as a jpeg, and then resave it as a tiff again.

Use the stand-alone version, not the plug-in, as the plug-in has a limited size of file it will handle. The stand-alone version seems to have no limitations.

Hope that helps
Mike

Thank you!!!! The software will let me salvage many of my photos from my recent trip to HI.

Is Neat Image better than Noise Ninja?

I find that it's all-too-easy to overdo NN...really messes with the integrity of the image...