The default noise reduction implementation in Adobe Lightroom has dramatically changed with the Adobe Lightroom 3 beta. High ISO rendering in the Lightroom 3 beta now resembles that of Raw Developer or Capture One more than it resembles that of Lightroom 2.

Here's an example using two 100% crops from an ISO 1600, 1/4s, f/5.5, 48mm image I took this weekend with the Panasonic GH1 and kit zoom in low light. On the left is the default LR2 conversion, on the right the default LR3 beta conversion:





The change is, to my eye, a significant improvement. For the first time, I am considering Adobe Lightroom as a first line RAW processing application.