I'm a bit dubious like that 'jimbo' who commented on TOP. It looks very much like an old trick from the past, when cameras would produce chroma noise the size of a dime, and no effective noise reduction software was on the market. The routine went like, split image into L*a*b layers, apply fuzzy filter to layers a & b, smooth a bit layer L, and then recompose image. Of course, using a jpeg as a compound of a & b layers is more straightforward and half the fuzziness is already done by the jpeg algorithm itself.
I've got to try ctein method for myself. It might be more evolutionary than revolutionary, but any improvement is worth trying. Still, I'm reserved.