Photomatix Pro 6 single-shot tone-mapping amplifies noise

[digitaldog]

albytastic,
When I first convert my single Nikon NEF RAW file to tiff in PSE and then import that tiff file into Photomatix, I get very satisfactory tone-mapping results with noise well under control.

You've discovered the solution. Hooray.
Not that what you're stating above has anything to do with the correction (again) about what Exposure really is, this time from albytastic.
Now that you know about exposure and how to get good results with Photomatix, we're done here?
There's always PhotoNet to post on...... 

Are there tone-mapping-only programs that would do a good job on single images?

See the last post from Frans Waterlander; seems Photomatix. 

[nirpat89]

You've discovered the solution. Hooray.

Surprise, surprise.

That was quick...took only 2 pages.

(wait though, there will be some problem with that approach as well.) 

[digitaldog]

Surprise, surprise.

That was quick...took only 2 pages.

(wait though, there will be some problem with that approach as well.)

Yup. You can bank on it.

[albytastic]

albytastic,

When I first convert my single Nikon NEF RAW file to tiff in PSE and then import that tiff file into Photomatix, I get very satisfactory tone-mapping results with noise well under control. When I import my Nikon NEF RAW file directly into Photomatix and let it do the RAW conversion, I get horrendous noise, no matter what tone mapping I apply. Apparently Photomatix does a bad job of converting Nikon NEF RAW files.

It's not just Photomatix which has problem doing a decent conversion of RAW files, which is why when I have RAW files (yes I do sometimes use RAW) I always use Canon's DPP.

After all It's their files so they do know best how to convert them.

[32BT]

After all It's their files so they do know best how to convert them.

Assumption is the mother of all f*ck ups...

[digitaldog]

It's not just Photomatix which has problem doing a decent conversion of RAW files, which is why when I have RAW files (yes I do sometimes use RAW) I always use Canon's DPP.

After all It's their files so they do know best how to convert them.

No, users who understand how to use the software know best. That's a critical job for some photographers; rendering their images. It is why many don't shoot JPEGs and allow a chip in a camera to do so.
Read this, tell us what you don't agree with in terms of rendering images by humans who capture them:
http://www.lumita.com/site_media/work/whitepapers/files/pscs3_rendering_image.pdf

[rabanito]

Read this, tell us what you don't agree with in terms of rendering images by humans who capture them:
http://www.lumita.com/site_media/work/whitepapers/files/pscs3_rendering_image.pdf

Well explained. I enjoyed this paper