I can't pretend that I have any of your expertise in these matters - I simply try and make the best prints that I can without getting too deep into the science of it all and glean what I can from experts such as yourself and others who so kindly post on these forums.
I have always (since v1.0) printed from LR and to date without problems (save for obvious user errors). I haven't tried exporting to PS to print simply because I can't see the point If I did so then I would still use the same profile. Is there a significant difference between how LR prints an adjusted raw file and how PS prints an exported Tiff file with LR adjustments? I don't know.
All I can say is that having come across this problem for the first time in 16 years of digital printing and x years with the 3800 and now 3880 (don't know how many years but I bought a 3800 when it was first introduced) I was completely confused and annoyed. I tried all kinds of different settings (1400dpi vs 2800dpi, High Speed vs normal speed, Fine Detail on and Fine Detail Off, changing profiles (howardm kindly sent me his profile), printing with Printer Manages Colour
But here are two shots of a print made on the 3880, The top one is without Noise Reduction and the bottom one has exactly the same development and printing settings as the top one but has +28 Noise Reduction added. Really bad jpegs shot under tungsten light but you can see the difference.
If you have a different analysis I would be interested to hear.
Best wishes
Philip
Philip, those JPEGs don't help me very much. It would be useful to see comparison images that really show-up the problem at its worst - perhaps skies? If you can post such we can better see what's going on. I maintain, you should not need noise reduction based on the capture information you provided, unless it is a case of massive under-exposure where the shadow areas could still be noisy at low ISO.
The point of using different kinds of settings within LR to achieve the same contrast, or to print the photo from Photoshop doing all your adjustments there (not in Camera Raw) would be to see whether the manner in which you are using the tools you used in LR are causing the issue or not. That is diagnostically important.
