Noise - societies... new Armageddon - it's around us 24/7. We live our lives now with a constant background thump. I get frustrated that I can often do little about it.
 
Digital photography brings yet more noise into our lives, BUT this time I can take full control and tame the speckled beast trying to embed itself into my images. I use two weapons in my fight against digital noise. Power Retouche Sharpness Filter and Neat Image.
 
They are cheap to buy and though neither are easy to master both can be learned fairly quickly. You may be content to simply use the built in presets or save a few custom ones of your own that work on your images. The image I have chosen as an example is a small section of a photograph take at ISO1600 to emphasis the noise levels. The settings shown in the screen shots of Power Retouche Sharpness and Neat Image are ones I created and saved as my defaults. If you too feel noise is taking over your everyday life then fight back (at least on your computer) and give both of these filters a try.