Am I just being messy? or just not doing it right?

Trying to learn how to use noise ninja and I thought I knew the types of things it would help resolve - but maybe not. In the attached image, I did some selective sharpening (perhaps this is where I am being messy) and I probably could have zoomed in more on the brush size, but notices that in a few places on the beak and head, the noise from the sharper background is coming through to the mask layer. I then thought - well, I'll use Noise Ninja to eliminate the noise from the resultant JPEG output. I dialed up the luminance a good bit - but did not notice a change. :Whoa!:. Any help would be greatly appreciated.Attachment 139678

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I did some selective sharpening (perhaps this is where I am being messy)

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I suspect you're correct about not being quite careful enough in making a good mask to selectively sharpen. What method did you use to make the mask?

John

your image is over-sharpened and it shows many artifacts/noise as a result, you should not need to sharpen so much if the RAW was sharp. can you post a 100% crop with no sharpening?

You've got it right. Your selection of the bird included a bit of BG, and sharpening resulted in small patches of noisy BG. Carefully selecting the bird should take care of your problem.