Noise Removal

Dogdots · April 15, 2009

I've been using CS3's noise reduction for my photos, but I'm thinking that maybe it isn't the best to use. Most times it works ok, but I've noticed that sometimes it looks like the photo shifts some. Is that normal?

I keep the settings at Basic Default.
Strength - 6
Preserve Details - 60
Reduce Color Noise - 12
Sharpened turned off
Remove JPEG Artifacts - checked on

When you use the noise reduction do you do it before editing or after? I've been doing it before my editing.

Is Noise Ninja easy to use? I see you can get it as a plug-in or stand alone. Which is easier to use?

pathfinder · April 15, 2009

Get NoiseWare, Mary.

It is inexpensive, very easy to use, and very hard to beat!

I have used NeatImage, Noise Ninja, Photoshop, and others.

NoiseWare, on an adjustment layer, is my only noise reducer now.

Ric Grupe · April 15, 2009

pathfinder wrote:

Get NoiseWare, Mary.

It is inexpensive, very easy to use, and very hard to beat!

I have used NeatImage, Noise Ninja, Photoshop, and others.

NoiseWare, on an adjustment layer, is my only noise reducer now.

I like Nik Dfine...makes an adjustment layer for me.

pathfinder · April 15, 2009

NoiseWare $49.95 for the Pro version, only $29.95 for the standard version, and the community version is free!

DFine $99.95

Both work fine.

I like Nik software, Viveza et al, but 50 bucks is 50 bucks to me

divamum · April 15, 2009

I use Noiseware community edition and it has been a godsend (particularly in the theater shoots I've done, where light was appalling and noise was an inevitable result of getting shutter speeds high enough to get the shot).

Free is good... especially when the product is excellent!

arodney · April 15, 2009

Another huge thumbs up for Noiseware.

Diamond D · April 15, 2009

I am a very satisfied user of Neat Image, but haven't used the others. From the Noiseware page it looks like the features and price are very similar. I'd suggest downloading the demo versions of each and testing on a few of your own shots.

Dogdots · April 15, 2009

Looks like noiseware is the "chosen one"

I went to their site and read up on it. Which is easier to use -- the stand alone or the plug-in? I would think the plug-in. Looks like I can download either one and try them out.

Do you use the noise removal before editing?

Thank you.

Edit: I just downloaded the free version and tried it out...WOW...it is good. Much better then the photoshop one. Question tho: What is the difference in the standard version that you pay for and the freebie? I'm thinking that the plug-in would be much easier then having to save it to a file and then reopen it again. When you use it as a plug-in does it make its own layer or do you need to do that?

pathfinder · April 15, 2009

Mary, I use the plug in Pro version for Photoshop because it will work on and save 16 bit images, and my editing work flow is in 16 bit until I am saving a final jpg.

NoiseWare has a lot of sliders and things to adjust, but the fact of the matter is I rarely use them. I do select Default, or Night shot, or Landscape or Portrait - Those choices seem to help some, but I otherwise just let it do its thing.

Now - I frequently do not use it on "all" my image. That may sound weird, but I use it on most of my skies even at ISOs of 100 or 200 if I have a lot of even sky in the image. I may not use it on portions of my image with a lot of fine detail that helps hide the noise also. So I frequently select a portion of an image and de-noise only that portion and not all of the image.

Also - I prefer to let a print decide how much noise killing I need, far more than whether I can see noise on my LCD. A lot of the noise we see on our monitors is not really significant after being dithered by an inkjet printer, but skies with large, smooth, blue areas tend to display noise more readily, so I scan those as needed.

I always duplicate a layer before I de-noise it, so that I can adjust the final opacity slider to render my final decision about how much de-noising vs detail I want to dial back.

Standard teaching is to denoise early, before sharpening and other editing steps, and that is generally a good idea.

But I frequently de-noise skyies as a very late step in my editing so I am not always consistent myself in this.

It is good to keep in mind that noise is frequently due to under exposure in the lower quarter tones. Avoid under exposure, and even ISO 1600 can look very nice with many modern DSLRs.

arodney · April 15, 2009

pathfinder wrote:

NoiseWare has a lot of sliders and things to adjust, but the fact of the matter is I rarely use them. I do select Default, or Night shot, or Landscape or Portrait - Those choices seem to help some, but I otherwise just let it do its thing.

Me too. All the sliders are cool for geeks, but the defaults work really well.

pathfinder · April 15, 2009

Ric Grupe · April 15, 2009

pathfinder wrote:

Both work fine.

I don't know anything about Noiseware...don't need to.:D

I like the dark UI of all of Nik's plugins...easier on my eyes...and kind of classy like LR and this website. I wish all software and web pages used the same color (or lack of it) scheme.

Dogdots · April 15, 2009

pathfinder wrote:

Mary, I use the plug in Pro version for Photoshop because it will work on and save 16 bit images, and my editing work flow is in 16 bit until I am saving a final jpg.

NoiseWare has a lot of sliders and things to adjust, but the fact of the matter is I rarely use them. I do select Default, or Night shot, or Landscape or Portrait - Those choices seem to help some, but I otherwise just let it do its thing.

Now - I frequently do not use it on "all" my image. That may sound weird, but I use it on most of my skies even at ISOs of 100 or 200 if I have a lot of even sky in the image. I may not use it on portions of my image with a lot of fine detail that helps hide the noise also. So I frequently select a portion of an image and de-noise only that portion and not all of the image.

Also - I prefer to let a print decide how much noise killing I need, far more than whether I can see noise on my LCD. A lot of the noise we see on our monitors is not really significant after being dithered by an inkjet printer, but skies with large, smooth, blue areas tend to display noise more readily, so I scan those as needed.

I always duplicate a layer before I de-noise it, so that I can adjust the final opacity slider to render my final decision about how much de-noising vs detail I want to dial back.

Standard teaching is to denoise early, before sharpening and other editing steps, and that is generally a good idea.

But I frequently de-noise skyies as a very late step in my editing so I am not always consistent myself in this.

It is good to keep in mind that noise is frequently due to under exposure in the lower quarter tones. Avoid under exposure, and even ISO 1600 can look very nice with many modern DSLRs.

Thank you for all this information

I played with the free version tonight and felt I was missing something so I will get the plug-in version. I thought that was the way I would need to go, but had to try the freebie first.

Knowing that the default is a good way to go really helps me a bunch. Having to figure that out would probably drive me crazy

Skies....I do need to learn how to take photos with the sky. I alway mess up on that.

I thought removing the noise first was the way to go, but I just wasn't sure. You mentioned using the opacity slider to render your final decision about how much de-noising vs detail you may want to dial back. Does de-noising effect detail?

Thanks a bunch

Ric Grupe · April 15, 2009

Dogdots wrote:

Does de-noising effect detail?

Always!

That's why you want to do it on a seperate layer...so you can selectively apply it.

Dogdots · April 15, 2009

Ric Grupe wrote:

Always!

That's why you want to do it on a seperate layer...so you can selectively apply it.

Good

I'll have to learn how to do it selectively tho...that will be new to me. I'm use to doing it on the whole photo.

pathfinder · April 15, 2009

Quick Mask makes it real easy.

Hit the Q key to bring up Quick Mask mode. Make sure black is your fore ground color by hitting the D key.

Hit the B key in Normal mode with a very soft brush. Paint over your image where you want to select parts for ediiting or de-noising. The selected part will turn red. WHen you have selected all you want hit the Q key again. If you select too much, deselect it by hitting the X key to put white as your fore ground color and paint away the red selected area.

Once you step out of Quick Mask mode by hitting the Q key, you should see your selection surrounded by marching ants. That will be the area acted upon by your editing step like Noiseware. If this is done on a duplicate layer above the background layer ( type ctrl-J first ) then you can finely turn the amount of effect by the Opacity slider in the Layers Pallette.

Try typing the keys as I directed, Mary, and see what happens.

It is really easy to use the key commands and much faster once you understand them.

Dogdots · April 16, 2009

pathfinder wrote:

Quick Mask makes it real easy.

Hit the Q key to bring up Quick Mask mode. Make sure black is your fore ground color by hitting the D key.

Hit the B key in Normal mode with a very soft brush. Paint over your image where you want to select parts for ediiting or de-noising. The selected part will turn red. WHen you have selected all you want hit the Q key again. If you select too much, deselect it by hitting the X key to put white as your fore ground color and paint away the red selected area.

Once you step out of Quick Mask mode by hitting the Q key, you should see your selection surrounded by marching ants. That will be the area acted upon by your editing step like Noiseware. If this is done on a duplicate layer above the background layer ( type ctrl-J first ) then you can finely turn the amount of effect by the Opacity slider in the Layers Pallette.

Try typing the keys as I directed, Mary, and see what happens.

It is really easy to use the key commands and much faster once you understand them.

Oh my this opened a door to the unknown

Thank you for the step by step information. That is excatly what I needed. I will give it a try tomorrow morning. Sounds easy, but learning the key commands will be new to me. I had stumbled across a list of the key commands somewhere to print out, but I can't find it. I'll keep looking tho as I know I have it somewhere in my favorites.

I love learning new things -- thank you for all your help

arodney · April 16, 2009

Old but still pertinent:

http://www.ppmag.com/bonus/2006/08/review-imagenomic-noiseware.html

Dogdots · April 16, 2009

arodney wrote:

Old but still pertinent:

http://www.ppmag.com/bonus/2006/08/review-imagenomic-noiseware.html

Thanks Andrew

I'm buying it this morning.

Dogdots · April 18, 2009

I bought the software program (Noiseware Pro) and I'm trying out the quick mask to select the part of the photo I would like to de-noise.

I'm having a problem. I hit the Q key to bring up quick mask and nothing happens

What am I doing wrong. I'm running on windows.

I did use the noiseware on the whole photo and that really takes away detail and sharpness on things so I can see why you would want to use it on the sky or certain areas as needed.

Hope you can help me with this

****I just played with it some more and I did figure out how to work the Q key to make a quick mask. I converted my photo to a smart object first. Hope that is ok??? I never knew removing noise was such a process

One thing tho...why does it lose so much in detail?

pathfinder · April 19, 2009

Remember to copy your layer first with ctrl-J, then....

Mary, once you hit the Q key, your Brush MUST be in the Normal Mode at ~100 % strength, and the forground color MUST be Black. If it is not black, hit the D key for default colors, and then the X key to reverse the default Black and white colors. Once you have black as your brush color, begin painting where you want to select. Make sure your brush is large ( use the right bracket key to enlarge ) and VERY soft ( the SHIFT +RIGHT BRACKET should make your brush get softer I believe.

Hit the Q key to exit Quick Mask mode and run your filter on your selection.

Dogdots · April 19, 2009

pathfinder wrote:

Remember to copy your layer first with ctrl-J, then....

Mary, once you hit the Q key, your Brush MUST be in the Normal Mode at ~100 % strength, and the forground color MUST be Black. If it is not black, hit the D key for default colors, and then the X key to reverse the default Black and white colors. Once you have black as your brush color, begin painting where you want to select. Make sure your brush is large ( use the right bracket key to enlarge ) and VERY soft ( the SHIFT +RIGHT BRACKET should make your brush get softer I believe.

Hit the Q key to exit Quick Mask mode and run your filter on your selection.

Thanks -- it worked

I don't know what I did wrong the first few times, but this time I made sure I "followed" your instructions closely and it worked well.

Why does it make the photo so soft looking? Is there a way to remove noise without losing detail?

pathfinder · April 19, 2009

I am not sure how to answer you Mary, as one of the reasons I like NoiseWare, in particular, is that I do not find the images "lose sharpness and look real soft" - Remember, I said to do it on a layer and blend the opacity to taste?

As you mentioned earlier, de-noising is usually done prior to creative or final sharpening, so this might play a role, if you did not re-sharpen again following NoiseWare. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. I usually use a bit of local contrast enhancement as a final step prior to printing.

I am trying to remember a picture where I know I de-noised part of it, but that is hard to be certain about as de-noising is a routine part of my workflow, if I notice grain that I don't like, but it is not remarkable later.

Here is an image I shot for the Route 66 group effort with a G10, ISO 100, under a very gray, dull sky. I am certain this sky, and probably the sign as well, as been through Noiseware. P&S images frequently display noise if looked at at 100%

[imgl]http://pathfinder.smugmug.com/photos/494931464_JGBT3-XL.jpg[/imgl] [imgr]http://pathfinder.smugmug.com/photos/515779005_XaLYx-L-0.jpg[/imgr]

Does this look non-sharp to you? The 100& crop is from a heavily edited image, but look at the grain in the sky and the junction with the sign, is this too blurry?

I guess I should add that how much blurry the image is, depends on how sharp it was to start with, and higher ISO images with lots of noise, are not as highly sharply defined due to the noise. Removing noise will not make blurry images sharper. I tend to de-noise skies even at ISO 100-200 at times. Noise at ISO 1600 has a more profound effect on an image, but noise almost always is in the lower quarter tones, and is made much worse by under exposure.

ISO 1600 can be quite useful with a modern DSLR even without noise reduction.

This was shot at ISO 1600, and I don't remember running the rocks through NR, the sky might have been tidied up

This is the image I use to display what a 40D is capable of at ISO 1600

Why don't you provide a link to your original file, Mary, and posters here can examine it and try to help you.

This image is straight from Lightroom last night, 40D, ISO 640, no NR even in LR, and a travel zoom Tamron 28-300 zoom.

Dogdots · April 19, 2009

Thank-you pathfinder for showing me some examples. That really helped. I took a look at some of my photos after looking at yours and I learned something....it has to be in focus first

Seriously your photos you posted taught me a bunch. I tried some photos I had that were taken under good conditions...sharp - in focus like I want and ran them through the program. I didn't select any special portion of the photo since it really didn't need anything done, but I tried it anyway and it kept things sharp and even made the out of focus objects look good. Also I noticed when doing this under Detail Enhancement there is a setting for Edge Smoothing. Mine was set at Low..not Auto. I played with all the different ones and noticed a small difference with each one. I liked the Auto and sometimes High setting. Which setting do you use? Do you play with this setting too?

I've attached two photos.

This first one is untouched except for I lightened it some using Levels so it wasn't so dark. I took this on a very cloudy day from a running car which I know isn't good to do. Its full of noise :cry

This second photo I ran thru the program then lightened it a little. You really can notice the difference. The reason I mentioned softness is because of the plants. I notice that they get softer or what I call softer. The white flowers in the right of the photo and then the green plants around/behind the red car on its side. I think in the first photo they are a bit sharper. Not that it matters really...right? Maybe it's just my eyes are use to seeing noise and I think it adds detail and sharp edges. I know this isn't the best photo since shooting conditions were terrible -- clouds, running car and not on a tripod. Shame on me

I did set the Edge Smoothness on High for this photo. And I noticed that the sharpness was set on 10%. Should I turn that off?

I hope you and anyone else can look at these two photos and let me know what is acceptable and what is not. Critique to the hilt because I want to learn as much as I can.

pathfinder · April 19, 2009

Actually, I use NoiseWare on Auto and rarely change it. I do use the default mode, or the Landscape mode, or Portrait mode, or Night Mode as I think that seems to help.

If you have lot of very fine detail, why worry about noise, it will get less sharp as you mention. You must remember, you can see noise at 100% on a monitor that will never show up in a print at all.

I de-noise things like skies, and skin where the variation due to noise will be objectionable, but in fine vegetation or rocks I rarely worry about it.

As you said, sharpness is first, before noise is something to worry about.

How large are you wanting these images of yours to print? I don't find noise terribly significant at the web sizes I am seeing here. How about a 100% crop perhaps? What was your camera and ISO?

Dogdots · April 20, 2009

pathfinder wrote:

Actually, I use NoiseWare on Auto and rarely change it. I do use the default mode, or the Landscape mode, or Portrait mode, or Night Mode as I think that seems to help.

If you have lot of very fine detail, why worry about noise, it will get less sharp as you mention. You must remember, you can see noise at 100% on a monitor that will never show up in a print at all.

I de-noise things like skies, and skin where the variation due to noise will be objectionable, but in fine vegetation or rocks I rarely worry about it.

As you said, sharpness is first, before noise is something to worry about.

How large are you wanting these images of yours to print? I don't find noise terribly significant at the web sizes I am seeing here. How about a 100% crop perhaps? What was your camera and ISO?

My ISO was set at 500 shooting with a 40D. As for how large a photo on this image...probably 11x14 if I were to print it. I did crop this photo in before posting it and I think it was at 100%.

So for this photo you may not have removed the noise? I can really notice a difference in the vehicles when its run through the NoiseWare, but it may not be important in this photo. Noise may actually add to the oldness of the cars.

The more I think about it this program the more I like it. Its just getting use to something new and learning when and how to use it that causes me so many issues

I thank-you so much for your help

pathfinder · April 20, 2009

Mary,

Two more vacation snapshots taken at ISO 1600 with a 5D, processed from RAW in LR2, NO noise reduction - I am certain as I just processed them this evening.

Shot under tungsten lighting in the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman Mt

ISO 1600 5D 1/50th f 5.0

ISO 1600 5D 1/25th f4.5

Dogdots · April 21, 2009

Those are good photos -- no noise and sharp. I've heard the 5D is awesome when the ISO is bumped up high. Wish my 40D was, but I think it has a lot to do with the settings I shot at to. I'll keep practicing with my settings.

I messed with some photos today with the noiseware and its good. Also I have your steps down by heart now on the process of using it in CS3. Thanks a bunch

Your second photo...that's a scary lookin' creature.

Noise Removal

Comments