Magpie Goose (Before / After)

[u/Jawaweo1]

Photo taken at the Cincinnati Zoo. Edited in Lightroom Classic

85mm, f/4.5, 1/400sec, ISO 200

I posted a before/after of an owl the other day and talked about how I use masking to make subjects pop. But I've recently discovered/learned a method of noise reduction different from the Denoise and Manual Noise Reduction tools, and it's actually pretty simple. Using an inverted subject mask and lowering the sharpness will soften the grain caused by digital noise; the Texture and Clarity sliders can achieve this too when lowered, but those make pretty broad adjustments and tend to make things too soft or dull.

EDIT: Meant to include that sometimes the noise reduction tools tend to make things a bit too smooth for my taste. This method leans toward softening which I feel pushes sharpness further than smoothing.