Cathedral in the dark.

[arith]

Is it better with or without noise?

I only have a small 1680 x 1050 20" display and during PP I can only see 1/3 of the image.

So often I'm missing something until I'm relaxing looking at it 100%, and in this case I couldn't figure out why bits looked blurred, at first I thought it was only due to dark areas.

Then I tried to see what this HDR looks like without noise reduction, eureka I found the problem, but now I can't sharpen as much or even at all because of the noise in the sky.

But I do not know which is better; they are both 5600 x 3750 to avoid posturisation on enlargement.

Image without noise and high sharpness



Image with noise but much less sharpened; it is a bit dotty in the sky but has much higher definition.

[Shadowman]

It's actually more pronounced in the first image but I needed your direction to find it.

[Donald]

Is it better with or without noise?


Image without noise and high sharpness


Image with noise but much less sharpened; it is a bit dotty in the sky but has much higher definition.

Steve

Have you got that the right way around? Is it not 'Without Noise and less Sharpened' and 'With Noise and More Sharpened'. Or am I getting it wrong - which is perfectly possible!?

Either way, I prefer the second image. More subtle.

[arith]

Trouble is when I think of doing these comparisons I have to start from scratch so I can't get them exactly the same, unless I think of doing it at the outset.

I like the top in small size but larger size shows up regions of blur, but maybe not too much to be bothered about.

The bottom one looks better larger, but then you can make out dots in the sky which I tried to get dark without losing the foreground, sharpening seems to make it a bit more contrasty but it is sharpened very little.

Maybe I could try some dodging and burning but I avoid that stuff because I find it hard to get right.

[arith]

Steve

Have you got that the right way around? Is it not 'Without Noise and less Sharpened' and 'With Noise and More Sharpened'. Or am I getting it wrong - which is perfectly possible!?

Either way, I prefer the second image. More subtle.

No it is the right way round Donald, sharpening fine detail and medium detail sharpens grey dots in the sky, noise reduction removes the dots so it can be sharpened with fine detail.

I just noticed it also removed a lot of detail in the stone making the top one look odd in places at 100%, which is about 24" x 16" , so quite big.

[Donald]

Ah, now I understand.

Still prefer the second one ... for the reason given above.

[arith]

I'm beginning to prefer the second now, and not only because I saw the lens flare, but because it looks more natural.



I don't know why I thought everybody could see this; the dots but maybe they are not so bad, and in this case I even saved a 16 bit tiff without a border, a border that I'm rapidly going off.

I don't mean the stars

[arith]

Crop of top one;


Crop of second;

[wilgk]

The first kind of belts me on the head to make sure I 'get it'.....the second one really has a 'less is more' quality and has me appreciating it for longer and wanting to go down the drive and into the cathedral.
I hope that makes some sense (no help to your technical question sorry)?

[arith]

Cheers Kay. I like the subdued look in the second. I've cropped quite wide as usual but if it is cropped down to street lamp and windows it is even more dramatic; but I'm not a fan of dramatic.

Around the corner was a better looking shot, if it wasn't for all those cars. I had to wait for a gap to take this. Very surprising and I never expected that.

[arith]

Nth attempt. It is really hard to keep the look of the second since the original looks like it is taken on a bright sunny day, I'm using layers to darken the sky.
Here I thought that the ghost removal feature in Picturenaut should be turned off, it might be affecting DeNoise5 but I also set highlight to -1 even though there isn't anything much actually brighter than a midtone.

I haven't put a border on this yet, because I don't know if it is actually an improvement. It can be downloaded from my site.

[arith]

I've decided to go with the darker sharpened version (last) with less contrast but what do you think of the border?

[arith]

Is this printable? I just had a few goes and my screen is calibrated. It came out too dark so I increased brightness in the printer and it turned blue So increased brightness of the image and that printed out blue.

My printer might be broke I suppose.