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Neat Image is a tool for automatically reducing digital camera noise.  I tried it out last night on a few photos - it manages to clear up a lot of random noise you see when zooming in on most digital pictures.  Best of all - it’s free for personal use!

I managed to get results that were pretty good, but not as striking as their examples.  I suppose the developers of the tool would understand how to get the most out of it.  You’ll notice a subtle difference in the shots that you’ve processed with the tool. 

It’s a bit of extra work for each shot, but I think it pays off to clean up the pictures you really like.

As far as I know, cleaning up pictures this way won’t affect how they look when printed professionally.  I believe that proper processing blurs the image enough that you won’t see small per-pixel artifacts.