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How can I reduce noise in my HDR Photography?

It seems whenever I make an HDR photo it turns grainy very fast, I look through some HDR photos by other photographers and they are nice and clear. Why are mine so noisy?
I use the software Luminance (aka Qtpfsgui), but I've seen other peoples photos made with the same software and they are nice and clear.
I do use a DSLR camera, it has a very expensive german wide angle lens on it (24mm-140mm).
and I have been doing the "layering technique" where I have an over done HDR with a midrange HDR and merge them together. And I am NOT doing psuedo HDR, I am doing image bracketing.
Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong? Is there a way to reduce noise? any other tips are greatly appreciated as well.

Here are some of my HDR's I have done, http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaredh13/sets/72157626423798024/

Jared,

You have a number of things going on with the HDR images you've pointed us to:
1- They're noisy (as you pointed out... in the sense that they are grainy)
2- They have ghosts around some of the objects in motion
3- You've got some wicked halo effects around the edges of objects too - which produces that (to my way of thinking) less than optimal HDR surreal effect. It certainly isn't photorealistic when that happens.

Here are some suggestions of things to try in capture and post-processing with an HDR program:

1- When you shoot your bracketed shots be sure your camera is on a tripod with any vibration control feature your camera has (on lens or body) turned off. Always turn VC off when camera is on tripod or you'll get shake (as counter intuitive as that seems...).

2- I don't use the HDR program you're using (I alternate b/wn Photomatix Pro & Nik's HDR Efex Pro), but a good workflow to follow in any case is to denoise your original images BEFORE running them through an HDR program. Any noise in the originals will only get magnified when run through an HDR processing program (just like it's accentuating every other detail in the shot). Then run the HDR. Then do cropping. Then do any final sharpening, last.

3- If you have control over the RADIUS in your HDR program, be sure it's not set too high. Definitely no more than b/wn 1-2 range. Or else you'll get those wicked halos (glowing edges). Unless you're specifically going for that effect, it makes an image look very fake, versus just retrieving some of the dynamic range details in shadows and highlights.

4- Also, if your software has it - when dealing with images that capture motion (like moving clouds) turn on the GHOSTING correction feature to eliminate the blurring caused by a mis-alignment of bracketed images.

Try those things first to see how they work for you.

Good luck!

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