Noise Reduction

[FrankMi]

I think that some cameras will need a bit of noise reduction.

Hi Alex. I find it fascinating that several of the Noise Reduction applications either provide or make possible camera specific profiles for this purpose. This leads me to think that this is something that could be more easily applied, where needed, to camera specific images with very little 'tweaking'?

[Crovean]

Mark and Chriss - LR3 and ACR use the same engine and I use both. Most of the time there is little or no noise to bother with. On some images, however, I can get an acceptable reduction in noise in either.

The area I have the most problem with is night shots and distant wildlife that has to be cropped and sharpened. It can also be a significant issue with tonemapped output. One could argue that these images are too far gone and should be trashed anyway. At the point I am in my learning curve, and particularly because it is not always possible to do a reshoot, I'm trying to get a feel for how far I can go so I am pushing the envelope so to speak.

In addition, I have some favorite images, like 'After the Rain' (http://frostbyte.smugmug.com/Photogr...the-Rain-L.jpg) that I would love to find a way to address the significant noise in the sky.

Frank,

Did you apply your NR at the beginning or at the end of your process? I have a somewhat a shot similar condition that was shot @ 3200 ISO and it end up very clean after NR was applied in LR3.

[FrankMi]

Hi Chriss. I wasn't doing any NR, other than what Photomatix does when you open the multiple images for tonemapping. The output of the merged images from the tonemapping process are typically noisy and by the time I had completed the post processing, significantly so.

One thing I haven't tried as yet is to redo the entire post processing sequence from scratch by applying NR to the multiple bracketed images. As it took many hours of masking and blending to get the final product, I am a little reluctant do go through all of that again. What I might do, however, is a quick test to see if the process would make enough of a difference to make the approach worth while for future images.

[Crovean]

Hi Chriss. I wasn't doing any NR, other than what Photomatix does when you open the multiple images for tonemapping. The output of the merged images from the tonemapping process are typically noisy and by the time I had completed the post processing, significantly so.

One thing I haven't tried as yet is to redo the entire post processing sequence from scratch by applying NR to the multiple bracketed images. As it took many hours of masking and blending to get the final product, I am a little reluctant do go through all of that again. What I might do, however, is a quick test to see if the process would make enough of a difference to make the approach worth while for future images.

See NR for LR3 I think is pretty good and I don't think purchasing the other plug-ins would help you more if you're doing the same process. Also NR should be done after everything is adjusted, either from photomatix or in LR3. I don't have photomatix so I can't really test it but it would be safe to assume that the final image is JPG or TIFF from photomatix.

[The Blue Boy]

Frank,

A thought has just struck me, if you open all your files in ACR, apply some NR and save. Then from Bridge open said files to merge in hdr in Photoshop then save that file (I think as a Radiance file) to open in Photomatix, would that help?

I've heard that Photomatix is quite noisy anyway. I don't really do much hdr other than using composites to get the same result.

[arith]

Quick less than 1 minute job, ya don't want to waste time on noise. 300%

[Colin Southern]

This may be because a 1Ds3 is better than a point-and-shoot camera for noise.

Hi Alex,

If shooting with a P&S in anything less than full sunlight then - for sure. But for modern FF & CF cameras, I'm not so sure. To be honest, the 1Ds3 is pretty lousy compared to more modern cameras in terms of high ISO performance / noise (tied to dynamic range). I still think that most of the time folks just need to expose their images more - definately to the point of them looking over-exposed (but not blown) on the review screen, and then bring back in PP. I still think that the majority of photographers forget that they can't shoot at high ISO and still enjoy a 2 stop exposure safety margin.

[FrankMi]

Frank,

A thought has just struck me, if you open all your files in ACR, apply some NR and save. Then from Bridge open said files to merge in hdr in Photoshop then save that file (I think as a Radiance file) to open in Photomatix, would that help?

I've heard that Photomatix is quite noisy anyway. I don't really do much hdr other than using composites to get the same result.

Hi Mark, I can open the files in Photomatix as RAW or JPG but I've been told that Lightroom does a much better job of the JPG conversion so that's the path I take. I hadn't previously done anything with NR so for an image like 'After the Rain' it may have helped me to avoid some of the noise issues. I'll need to test to see if that really helps and if it does, by how much. Because I have Photomatix I haven't tried HDR in Photoshop. I suppose I could also test that approach but again, I have been told that Photoshop's HDR is both weak and very slow to process.

[FrankMi]

Quick less than 1 minute job, ya don't want to waste time on noise. 300%

Hi Steve, it's hard to tell on an image this small but from here is looks better. What process did you use?

[arith]

Hi Steve, it's hard to tell on an image this small but from here is looks better. What process did you use?

Just Topaz DeNoise5, as in the video instructions. It is clean, I prefer to get noise over and done with quickly rather than mess about. If it looks ok, it is ok. After all even posturisation might not show up on a print and only bad noise has ever shown up on any of my prints.

You need to apply DeNoise5 straight after ACR by turning off ACR noise, and before deconvolution or it just doesn't work. My workflow is ACR white balance fill and recovery ect, Topaz DeNoise, Topaz InFocus, Topaz Detail for local contrast, colour, Photoshop Elements for finishing off.

[FrankMi]

Thanks Steve! I may download their free trial, along with several others, and compare the results. You seem to be fairly familiar with Topaz, have you looked into their ReMask application?

[Pictus]

Remask is excellent also Denoise, but for noise stuff also consider trying
DenoiseMyImage http://www.adptools.com/en/denoisemy...scription.html
the result is excellent and it is not expensive.

[Glenn NK]

Hi Frank,

The thing that always pops into my mind first when I hear questions being asked about noise reduction is "why are you needing noise reduction in the first place?" 95 times out of 100 it's due to people having to reveal noise when they post-process due to the shot being significantly under-exposed at time of capture. Just wondering if there's any scope for "an ounce of prevention" here? Personally, I never need noise reduction, and the only time I ever use it is when trying to salvage a grossly under-exposed shot that was taken with a P&S camera. In my experience, all that noise reduction programs seem to achieve is a softening of the image.

What always pops into my mind is "does the noise actually show up in prints", or is it just visible when pixel peeping?

Just wondering.

Glenn

[The Blue Boy]

Frank,

I've been told that Lightroom does a much better job of the JPG conversion

Seriously?

Don't both Lightroom and CS5's ACR amount to the same thing?

[FrankMi]

Hi Pictus, I'll look into DenoiseMyImage. Hopefully they'll have a tutorial that will provide more detail. Can you elaborate on what makes ReMask better than CS5 selection and masking? Thanks!

Hi Glenn, I usually don't do prints and I'm not really all that concerned about pixel peeping, but when the noise is obvious looking at the image on my monitor full screen, I feel I need to improve the image. Thanks for the feedback!

Hi Mark, I do believe that ACR and Lighroom use the same underlying engine. My comment on the conversion from RAW to JPEG was comparing Photomatix to Lightroom, where I normally do the conversion for images to be tonemapped in Photomatix. Thanks!

[Pictus]

You are welcome, go to http://www.youtube.com/user/topazlabs#p/search and search for the Remask tutos and go to http://russellbrown.com/tips_tech.html and look at the CS5 masking tutos, then you will know what each can do, sorry I am too busy/overloaded/lazy to give a good answer, the tutos for sure will do.
Anyway here the principal Remask video http://youtu.be/qcfm8Do2EjI

About the DenoiseMyImage, it is very easy to use, no mysteries
Each image and needs are different, but here my starting point for the plug-in

[arith]

Thanks Steve! I may download their free trial, along with several others, and compare the results. You seem to be fairly familiar with Topaz, have you looked into their ReMask application?

I'm learning how to use ReMask 3 now Frank.

[FrankMi]

Thank you, everyone that provided feedback on how to get noise under control. I ended up getting Topaz DeNoise as part of the Topaz Bundle.

The amount of noise in the sky of the 'After the Rain' image was simply too excessive to be corrected using the final post processed image. As I had probably worked for 5-6 hours masking and cloning to eliminate the pesky car lights and bring out the details in that image, I am hesitant to jump right in and reprocess the image from scratch. However, I am convinced that if I do, I can manage the noise starting with the original and will have a much better result when I have finished.

[Bobobird]

Interesting discussion.

Suggest reading what this guy has to say about his NR workflow. His explanations are simple, easy to understand and more importantly makes sense.

http://www.nicknphoto.com/noise-control/

I have experimented with his technique for a short time and overall the results are good.

[Davey]

I tend to be happy with ACR for NR but sometimes use neatimage if it's particularly problematic. As mentioned earlier there are other workflows albeit a little longer to deal with noise such as working on individual channels (especially blue).

One thing I found of use you may already know as I first come across it on these forums (and in the tutorial section) is exposure combining/averaging image stack.

Obviously it is only of use in tripod/still shots but it's likely to be useful still since the worse noise situations (for me at least) is low light/long exposure. Due to most noise being none uniform this gives pretty good results in some cases and doesn't suffer from fine detail destruction that neatimage and some software fixes can although they're usually my first choice as work fine most the time.

Few ways of doing similar thing. I use the layer opacity way as described on cic tuts with equally exposed images. There are other ways of averaging such as changing layer modes and combining shorter exposures but I've never tried them just came across them so can't comment on effectiveness sorry.