Where is Noise Reduction in your Workflow?

[Van Isle]

Where is noise reduction in your workflow, and why?

I do my NR after all base adjustments like exposure control and white balance, and after global and local colour and contrast adjustments like D-Lighting, levels and curves, colour balance. BUT it goes before sharpening, cropping, colour profile, and "output."

Reasoning: doing these changes (like lightening) create or reveal noise through dithering or other computational reasons. Although I have never done a side-by-side, I am going on the advice of Jason P. Odell, author of "Guide to Capture NX."

Others?

[Duffy Pratt]

I can't vote because the correct option for me does not appear on the ballot.

I will typically reduce noise after leaving ACR, but before doing anything in PS. I use Noiseware. In theory, there would be times when I might refrain from doing a strong move in ACR because it would exacerbate the noise. I haven't run into this problem in practice, at least not yet.

The idea of eliminating noise early comes down to this: you want to eliminate the noise before you do anything that would amplify it. The most notorious ways to amplify noise are sharpening, and lightening dark areas.

Basically, I think that as long as you are getting rid of the noise before you can see that you have worsened it, then you are probably OK.

Duffy

[arodney]

I can't vote because the correct option for me does not appear on the ballot.

I will typically reduce noise after leaving ACR, but before doing anything in PS. I use Noiseware.

Ditto. I don't use it a lot but when necessary, its a show stopper. So that means doing everything in ACR or LR, but not capture sharpening because I'll do that AFTER running Noiseware.

[pathfinder]

Frequently, I use NoiseWear on a selection in an adjustment layer, so that I can dial back the noise, like in the sky for instance, but not affect other areas of interest in the image. I do this after popping out of ARC, and before sharpening. I usually crop first thing after Raw conversion, I do not think cropping affects noise directly in any way.

The best way to avoid noise is avoiding under exposure of course.

[dusty-dog]

I have found that the noise reduction software in Capture NX to be excellent. But, once you run it, it slows the program down miserably. Extremely miserably. But, it's really good. So, it's the last thing I do when converting and processing an image in NX, and only if necessary, and before I open the converted tif in CS3. There are times when I'll finish process an image in CS3, and decide that it needs some noise reduction. So, I'll open the image back up in NX, just to reduce the noise. I hate the noise reducer in CS3, and I don't feel like spending more money right now on a Noise Ninja or whatever plug-in. So, NX is it for now. It's a good thing it's so good.

[claudermilk]

Mine is largely dictated by my RAW converter, but happily they see it the way I do. NN gets run very early in the processing pipeline for the reason Duffy outlined: you don't want to amplify the noise before trying to eliminate it.

[Van Isle]

To those who reduce noise right away, what do you do when you have reduced noise, lightened/brightened/exposure controlled the image and have revealed/created MORE noise? Do you reduce noise again at the risk of losing detail again? :dunno

[ziggy53]

To those who reduce noise right away, what do you do when you have reduced noise, lightened/brightened/exposure controlled the image and have revealed/created MORE noise? Do you reduce noise again at the risk of losing detail again? :dunno

I've only had to deal with that scenario in a few instances and I usually look for areas where the noise is most "visible" which is usually large regions with little detail, like a sky for instance. In that case, I build a mask of just the obvious region and noise reduce that region in a new layer. Areas with a lot of detail usually don't need the additional reduction if the detail has enough interest.

It's always a subjective decision, so use your best judgement.