Should I denoise more? I just selected a denoise profiled and made no adjustments. How would you edit?
IMG_2875.CR2 (8.8 MB)
20260609_0001.CR2.xmp (17.2 KB)
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IMG_2875.CR2 (8.8 MB)
20260609_0001.CR2.xmp (17.2 KB)
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At the size you shared here, I don’t see any noise at all. So I wouldn’t bother going further. You also have to be careful not to go too far, or it may end up looking unnatural and plastic-like.
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Thanks. I zoomed in to look at the dark background and didn’t see any but just thought I’d verify
The longer I’m involved in photography, the less I care about noise.
In this case, the CR2 file displays almost zero noise when opened in Darktable, so I think you’re golden without using any denoising whatsoever. In fact, I would personally even add a bit of grain to the image, maybe like this:
IMG_2875.CR2.xmp (12.5 KB)
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Apologies… for posting 4 crops… couldn’t resist.
No noise problems here at ISO 200.
Noise to be expected in dim light and/or higher ISO’s (like 1600+)
Mostly noise goes away sufficiently by using the profiled denoise setting.
Sometimes when larger area’s having less details contain disturbing noise I treat them separately (with a mask), or sometimes I just crank up the denoise strength a bit. You’ll have to play around a bit with the settings. And not pixel peep too much… 
And the xmp files
IMG_2875_03.CR2.xmp (17.6 KB)
IMG_2875_02.CR2.xmp (16.8 KB)
IMG_2875_01.CR2.xmp (16.3 KB)
IMG_2875.CR2.xmp (14.4 KB)
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A quick 3 steps can be to use the color noise only preset first if necessary, then the default profiled denoise and then you can drop the protect shadows first to boost the denoise a little…If I want to denoise I do this set of incremental steps quickly…an evaluate
I also often use contrast eq, surface blur which was the old bilateral denoise module and astro denoise …all of these at times to deal with the salt and pepper if its looking bad… usually coupled with the chroma noise only preset of profiled denoise…
But mostly I look to correct color noise and then only luma if I can do it in a way that seems to be an improvement…
My 2 cents…
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I omitted denoise altogether. Beautiful tiger lily. I think it would have been even nicer if the old bloom behind had been pinched off. Thanks for sharing
IMG_2875.CR2.xmp (25.4 KB)
Note: I exported as an intermediary TIF at 2048px and applied slight output sharpening before exporting to JPG.
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I personally wasn’t worried about noise in this image, but since noise was the focus of the thread I put extra effort into denoising. What I did notice however was hot pixels which surprised me at 200ISO. Easily handled by the hot pixels module.
IMG_2875.CR2.xmp (18.2 KB)
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There is very little noise to begin with, but I tried to make it extra smooth, while adding local contrast.
Edit: Forgot to say, I found the enhanced colour matrix in this one again. Seems to be a little more vibrant to begin with, with slight hue pulls towards the sRGB primaries?
Edit 2: All that smoothness must be the reason for the relatively low filesize. This is 90% jpg with no downscaling
IMG_2875.CR2.xmp (12.6 KB)
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I like the blueish background from @Thomas_Do 's edit. So I somewhat picked up this idea:
IMG_2875.CR2.xmp (17,5 KB)
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