Share your favourite Noise Reduction Strategies

[shrinkie1964]

I am really curious what people like to do.

Have you invested in external plug-ins or do you use the built in NR in Elements or ACR?

When do you do your NR? Do you apply it to the whole photo or selectively through brushes or masks? Do you control its application with an extra layer or special use of blending modes?

I LOVE to do indoor stuff at high ISO these days (see a zillion of my kid shots at http://www.flickr.com/leslie_wright) and am keen for tips. I shoot a D80 and really don't want to jump on the D90 bandwagon yet. I am saving up for a D700 or its successor :;

tia,

Les

[Jeff Perry]

I find the Noise (removal) tool in PSE and CS lacking in flexibility and power. Just doesn't do the job for me in many cases. I alternate between Nik's Define 2 and PictureCode's Noise Ninja. Both are very flexible and fast. Each has its attributes, and depending on the image one usually does a better job than the other.

A more recent addition to my noise removal arsenal is Denoise forom Topaz Labs. This tool (free to license owners of Topaz Adust) does an exceptional job of removing noise without introducing unwanted softness. The major problem with it is the speed, it is soooooo slow, I mean 7-10 minutes slow. I am hoping they find a way to imporve the speed, as the quality of the results is first rate.

I have also tried Noiseware (actuall still have the free stand-alone version), but prefer the Define and Ninja plug-ins.

jeff

[shrinkie1964]

I particularly like the selective denoising by colour range facility. I can blast the heck out of the entire image to smooth out the noise in all the blurry stuff, but then can put eyedroppers on skin and hair and maybe a key item of clothing the drop back the denoising in places where I want to rescue detail.

I have tried blasting the noise on a separate layer but dialing it back somewhat with the Opacity slider. This strategy seems to work better for, say, high pass sharpening than it does denoising.

Eager for more perspectives.

les

[ljameso1]

I use acr. For really noisy skies in PSE will select and apply gaussian blur. My camera doesn't seem to have much noise until I get up to iso 1600, though.

[jo]

First I zoom waaayyy in to look for noise. I use Imagenomic's Noiseware Professional when the Adobe's noise reduction doesn't take care of it.

But I usually do selective sharpening to avoid adding noise to a whole image in the first place.

[TonyW]

I've been a long time user of Neat Image but, like Jeff, recently started using Topaz Denoise which does an excellent job (and works on 16 bit images which my "home" version of Neat Image didn't). It is slow but that's the price you have to pay for doing a good job on cleaning up noise. And it does work well with my D80 at 3200 ISO.

Tony

[msbrad]

Shall check into the Topaz Denoise.
I do have Imagenomics, but I don't like the way it shrinks the file size.

Mostly, I've been using filter>noise>dust and scratches...then sharpen> unsharp mask.
m

[shrinkie1964]

I've been a long time user of Neat Image but, like Jeff, recently started using Topaz Denoise which does an excellent job (and works on 16 bit images which my "home" version of Neat Image didn't). It is slow but that's the price you have to pay for doing a good job on cleaning up noise. And it does work well with my D80 at 3200 ISO.


Tony, over in the cutthroat gear forums the D90 is being held up as the advance consumer "winner" in the noise wars, but some D80 owners like me aren't giving up so quickly.

I get lots of usable ISO 1600 samples and occasionally passable ISO 3200 samples, but if there was some way to clean up noise more accurately and still preserve some decent colour, contrast, and dynamic range, I would be most interested. I should check out a trial download.

[Jeff Perry]

Imagenomic that publishes the Noiseware plug-in also distributes a free stand alone "Community Edition" that works quite well if you don't mind working on the image outside of PSE first. Just be aware that the software strips out the EXIF data in the image so work on a copy of the image (like I really had to suggest that right?)!

Jeff

[shrinkie1964]

I should check out a trial download.

Tony, I have accepted that maybe I haven't gotten the hang of it, but I must admit that the slow speed of the Topaz "best" setting still isn't quite bowling me over in the results (I downloaded the trial). I am finding the selective abilities of Dfine or Noiseware really seems better for me, especially as I get more comfortable tweaking things according to colour and tonal ranges and the like.

About the usability of high ISO images, I really do think that so much can be done to make the most of them. The following lowlight candid of my mother in law started out as ISO 3200, WB compromised, and somewhat OOF. I fixed the WB in Aperture (that is where most of my images start out), denoised in Noiseware, tweaking so that hair and skin detail wasn't smoothed out to much, sharpened it with the excellent high pass technique recently covered in Killer Tips, and added back some grain with RealGrain--the Superia 1600 preset is one of my favourites for people. I ended up with a not bad snapshot with a surprising amount of depth, detail, and dynamic range preserved. And it didn't take me long either.

Here is that sample link:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3157/2994605243_bcac2a6e83_o.jpg

Les

[shrinkie1964]

I have to admit that I have found that if luminance and chroma noise occur in an area I want blurry anyway, i use the blur tool to obscure it further if it is in a portion of the picture I want blurry anyway.

This well exposed ISO 1600 image did not, in my opinion, require much formal NR, but I did choose to further blur the distracting stuff in the upper right even more than it already was to homogenize noise and give the image a cleaner look in that area:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3204/2995195873_06be548a58_o.jpg

[TonyW]

Les: I have been shooting RAW and find that Topaz Denoise does a pretty good job albeit slow (I think when shooting RAW there is no in camera NR although I have high ISO NR turned off anyway). I try to avoid anything higher than 1600 and that's where my cheapest and best Nikon lens comes in - the 50mm f1.8 . That's worth the difference between ISO 800 and ISO 3200 compared to my 18-70mm 3.5/4.5 zoom. I did get to use a D300 recently and it certainly has an advantage at high ISO - I assume the D90 is the same as it has the same sensor. But I'm not yet ready to go out and get one - waiting to see what the next generation brings ;) . Of course if I had the money I go get a D700 and be able to shoot at 25600 ISO :)
Tony