Which noise reducer prog do you prefer ?

[gus]

I am about to buy one.

I have run the trial version of Noise Ninja & was pretty impressed ...but before i lay the ready down & digital cameras/computers etc being what it is (changing daily)...i thought i would ask if anyone has any other newer noise reducing progs to try.

Ta
Gus

[wxwax]

I have NN but try never to use it. I'd like to try NeatImage, it seems to do a good job. But you should also check out Rutt's two new threads on using Photoshop to get rid of noise.

[Eric&Susan]

I use the noiseware community edition which is a freebie. It works well so I'm assuming the upgraded pay for version would work even better.


Eric

[rutt]

I have NeatImage and sometimes I think it does a great job. But as Sid points out, I've just started to discover some techniques that you can do in PS itself and which I think have the potential to do better.

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=8930
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=8924

[gus]

Thanks rutt/sid...i did look at the info but im a 'press this button for noise reduction' type of bloke.

[gus]

I use the noiseware community edition which is a freebie. It works well so I'm assuming the upgraded pay for version would work even better.


EricEric i just can seem to get anywhere with this version of noiseware...all it does is puts huge amounts of noise into the shot :scratch Hows that...i can get a perfectly good prog to run backwards.

Heres the shot i start with

http://wadjelaphotography.smugmug.com/photos/18625312-M.jpg

& here is what happens to it after a default dose of Noiseware

Ok...so the 'extra' noise dissapeared when i took the shot off the prog & stored it :scratch Can anyone see a diff here ?

http://wadjelaphotography.smugmug.com/photos/18625442-M.jpg



And with the trial version of Noise Ninja

http://wadjelaphotography.smugmug.com/photos/18625685-M.jpg

[DJ-S1]

Try the free version of NeatImage. Download it, then download the profiles for your camera. I just load the image, click auto, then click "auto fine-tune". Done. Free. Cool!

[pathfinder]

'gus - I use Neat Image, simply because it is a nice Plug In for PS, and is available on a MAC for 16 bit images. Noise Ninja originally was a stand alone program - I have it on my WIN machine - but I found I never used it because it was not as convenient a work flow. Neat Image just seems easier and more intuitive for me, and runs fast on a MAC.
Sometimes Gaussian blur of the a and b channel in LAB can be helpful like Scott Kelby recs in his book. I have not experimented with Rutt's suggestion of blurring in Lightness etc, although I want to give it a go.

[rutt]

'gus - I use Neat Image, simply because it is a nice Plug In for PS, and is available on a MAC for 16 bit images. Noise Ninja originally was a stand alone program - I have it on my WIN machine - but I found I never used it because it was not as convenient a work flow. Neat Image just seems easier and more intuitive for me, and runs fast on a MAC.
Sometimes Gaussian blur of the a and b channel in LAB can be helpful like Scott Kelby recs in his book. I have not experimented with Rutt's suggestion of blurring in Lightness etc, although I want to give it a go.

Actually, the real key to this idea is to use the dust & scratch filter instsead of blur. It seems very effective if you target it at a channel that actually has noise.

And Jim, I though your ISO 1600 butterfiles would be perfect for trying these techniques. I'd love to know how it works and how it compares with NI. Negative results (NI works better, nothing works, &etc) are also results. I want to know.

[pathfinder]

Actually, the real key to this idea is to use the dust & scratch filter instsead of blur. It seems very effective if you target it at a channel that actually has noise.

And Jim, I though your ISO 1600 butterfiles would be perfect for trying these techniques. I'd love to know how it works and how it compares with NI. Negative results (NI works better, nothing works, &etc) are also results. I want to know.
My plate is pretty full this week, but remind me next week if I don't report results. I will give your method a try and see what I can find out. ALtho my experience with the dust and scartch filter when I was scanning slides was that it blurred the images significantly. In LAB, maybe it won't though too.

[rutt]

My plate is pretty full this week, but remind me next week if I don't report results. I will give your method a try and see what I can find out. ALtho my experience with the dust and scartch filter when I was scanning slides was that it blurred the images significantly. In LAB, maybe it won't though too.

Let's take this to the thread about the technique, OK. My reply is here (http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=84763&postcount=2).

[cambler]

I find a very careful use of Noise Ninja helps incredibly on cheerleading competition photos.

I have to shoot ISO 1600 on a D70 - even with f/2.8 it's still pretty dark (no strobes allowed, for good reason).

NN gives me back about two stops.

[mercphoto]

I seldom noise reduce, but I have found I like the actions provided by Noel Carboni here:

http://home.att.net/~ncarboni/DigiPhoto.html

The actions give you three levels of noise reduction, plus other useful actions for shadow detail, exposure compensation, color correction and such. All for $15.

[cletus]

Good thread 'gus :thumb

Interesting to see everyone's noise removal tool of choice.

I don't have a noise removal plug-in that I use. Mainly because I've never gotten around to buying one. I've been trying to get by with doing things by hand - although I haven't been having much luck :D

Hopefully Rutt's thread (http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=8924) will help!

[gus]

Good thread 'gus :thumb

Interesting to see everyone's noise removal tool of choice.


Thats what i wanted to know also. Good to try the different types.

[Khaos]

Noise Ninja professional version allows me to work in 16 bit, do the others?

[mercphoto]

As per working in 16-bit mode, this one works in Photoshop CS and does work in 16-bit mode:

http://home.att.net/~ncarboni/DigiPhoto.html

[rutt]

Thanks rutt/sid...i did look at the info but im a 'press this button for noise reduction' type of bloke.

At first that seemed like a pretty reasonable answer, but really none of these things actually works that well all the time. They all have a lot of tweaks you can do. The best of them work OK most of the time without tweaks, but not always.

I think the technique I got from Dan is pretty close. Not one step, but not many:

Convert to LAB
Find the channels with noise
Apply dust & scratch filter to them


Thre are only three LAB channels, so you just have to look in three places for noise. Figuriing out the right values is pretty easy. For the L channel, you have to be careful to use a low radius (say 1,2,3) and keep the threshold high enough so it doesn't make a mess. For A and B you can use much bigger numbers (4-10) since it's hard to make a mess there.

I'd try this once or twice before you decide it's too hard.

[minoltaman]

I would consider Neat Image one of the most valuable tools I own. From a little noise to major noise, if you can get a good noise profile, it can almost always handle the job. At times you may need to do a little fine-tuning, but once you get the hang of it, NI will most certainly become one of your best friends for life. Or at least until noise is no longer an issue...:nod NI is available as a stand alone and a plug-in. If you get a pro-edition you can do 16bit images. If you have a high noise camera, you need neat image or similar.


Cheers

-don

[Jerry Curtis]

I tried the demo version of NN, and a freebie program called Helicon, but now use only the built-in noise reduction features of PSP9. Maybe I'm deluding myself, but I think it does the job quite well. It has 8 different tools - like small scratch removal, despeckle, edge-preserving smooth, texture-preserving smooth; and the more agressive Digital Camera Noise Removal with total control over the level of correction. I have compared the results to other programs and can't see any difference in the loss of definition for the same degree of noise removal.

All shots in both sub galleries here were shot with a V1 at ISO800 and run through PSP9 noise removal. Most of the lack of sharpness is due to cam and image movement from shooting hand-held mostly at shutter speeds of 1/125s or slower, and not from the noise removal.

http://www.pbase.com/icicle50/sports

[colourbox]

It should be pointed out that there is one thing the better plug-ins do that manual methods generally do not. The good plug-ins can analyze the image and detect the noise pattern using programmed knowledge about how digital camera sensor noise works. If they're doing it right, they can identify the noise (vs. details) more accurately and therefore remove it more accurately than a manual method that blindly applies a uniform blur or other filter that has just one generalized idea about noise characteristics. The better plug-ins can "profile" the noise of a specific camera, to theoretically nail just the noise and leave true details untouched, hopefully.

To throw another wrench into it, I was well on my way to evaluating demos and almost buying a noise reduction plug-in when it was announced that Photoshop CS2 has a new noise reduction filter......built in. So now I am going to hold off and see if CS2's noise reduction will be good enough to save me the money I would have spent on a separate plug-in.

[digismile]

For those that have never noticed, the Photoshop CS RAW converter has both Luminance smoothing and Color Noise Reduction.

Click on the detail tab and you will see what I mean.

[Adelphi03]

I like to use Xat Image Optimiser (http://www.xat.com/io/index.html), it always gives me good results.