Sooo, I went through this last year after a huge trip to Zion. Honestly, the 2k file count is a mood lol. Since you're budget-conscious, I basically started using DxO PureRAW 4 for my denoising. It's like $119 once, so no extra subs! The DeepPRIME tech is actually insane for keeping those organic rock textures while killing noise. I also messed around with Skylum Luminar Neo for quick masking... saved me so much time, right??

Seconding DxO PureRAW 4! It's actually amazing. But yeah, also check out ON1 NoNoise AI 2024 cuz it's usually cheaper and honestly saves sooo much time with masking too. Good luck!! 👍

tbh I think everyone forgets about the hardware side when dealing with 2,000 files - basically if youre trying to run heavy AI models locally on an older rig its going to take forever and IIRC most tools reallyyy rely on having a beefy GPU with lots of VRAM to handle those high-res landscape exports without crashing. Not 100% sure but I heard some pros are actually moving away from the 'one-click' apps and building their own local scripts to keep that organic feel: • Local Hardware Acceleration - Pretty sure you need a modern NPU to make the noise reduction feel 'instant' instead of waiting forever for each frame.
• AI-Assisted Culling - Someone told me there are DIY setups where you use light AI to pick the sharpest ones first so you only have to edit the top 10%... saves so much time.
• Open-Source Masking - If youre tech-savvy you can look into trained models for specific landscapes - I think they can be way more precise than the big brand plugins if you know how to tweak the parameters yourself. Honestly just making sure your PC can actually handle the processing load is half the battle if you want to keep the textures looking natural and not mushy!

> First, I do a lot of blue-hour and low-light shooting, so I need an AI tool that handles noise reduction intelligently Honestly, i feel u on the 2,000 RAW file dread lol. Been shooting landscapes for over a decade and only recently let AI touch my workflow. For the blue hour noise issue, Topaz Photo AI is literally a lifesaver. It keeps the pine needle texture way better than the old manual sliders ever did. But tbh, the built-in "Denoise AI" in Adobe Lightroom Classic is actually insane now. It’s way more organic than it used to be and handles grain without that plastic look. For masking, Adobe's "Select Sky" handles those messy PNW horizon lines in like... seconds. It srsly saves so much time compared to manual brushing. Just keep the effect sliders moderate so it doesnt look like fake. I mean, ur gallery clients wont even notice if u dont overdo it. Definitely try the Adobe Photoshop "Remove Tool" for that sensor dust too... it's basically magic. gl! 👍

> I’m a bit of a skeptic. For me, the most important thing is keeping the landscape looking natural. I totally get the skepticism because the market is honestly flooded with tools that over-egg the pudding. I spent a few months doing a deep dive into the different brand ecosystems to see who actually prioritizes pixels over "art." Basically, the industry has split: you've got the giant subscription-based brands that are trying to be everything to everyone, and then the smaller, specialized devs who focus strictly on the math of light and optics. In my experience, the big "household name" brands often push the AI too far toward that plastic look because they’re chasing the social media crowd. I eventually moved my workflow toward a couple of niche developers who treat AI more like a surgical tool for demosaicing. My current setup involves a dedicated "pre-processor" from a smaller firm that handles the heavy lifting before I even touch a slider. It’s been a TOTAL game changer for my high-volume shoots (especially for those pesky blue-hour shadows). It’s definitely a "best-of-breed" market right now—you don't have to stay married to one ecosystem to get professional results.