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View Full Version : Noise Reduction Plug-Ins: Yes or No?


Jason Dunn
12-11-2006, 01:38 AM
Since coming back from Hawaii with several thousand RAW images (more on that later), I've been thinking much more about how to best utilize RAW. One of the things I just discovered recently was the Luminance Smoothing and Colour Noise Reduction functions in the Adobe Camera RAW plug-in. I'm quite impressed with how they reduce noise - I took quite a few sunset photos in Hawaii, where my ISO was bumped up to 1600, so I have some noisy images. There's one photo in particular that turned out really nicely, and a family member has requested a 16 by 20 inch print of it. I need to keep the noise under control with such a large print size, so I'm looking at the Noise Ninja plug-in (http://www.picturecode.com/). I read the review we published almost two years ago (http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/articles.php?action=expand,7287), but it seems more attuned to reducing noise in JPEG files. I've done some testing on my own - looking at the same image, one RAW processed with maximum noise reduction, and one processed with none then Noise Ninja applied, and I'm not seeing very good results from Noise Ninja. If I use Noise Ninja on the post-RAW noise reduced image, I start to lose detail. So I'm looking for some opinions about noise reduction - if I'm shooting in RAW, is the Adobe Camera RAW noise reduction "good enough", or is Noise Ninja better and worth learning how to use properly? Thanks for any opinions!

[Bonus points: any thoughts about PhotoKit Sharpener (http://www.pixelgenius.com/sharpener/index.html)?]

Vincent Ferrari
12-11-2006, 02:08 AM
I would also give NeatImage a look. When I was looking for a noise reducer, I tried both and found NeatImage a bit easier and the community is very active with profiling new cameras. I love it and when I moved to the Mac, they even migrated my license for me. Can't argue with that!

PS: I shoot almost exclusively in RAW and it definitely makes a difference at ISO 800 and 1600.

Jason Kravitz
12-11-2006, 11:16 AM
Jason - good point on Noise Ninja. When I wrote that review I was shooting mainly in JPG. Now I shoot in RAW+JPG but typically end up using processed RAW most the time.

When I was playing with NN for the review, I was not looking as closely at image degradation at 100% pixels. I was not doing a lot of printing either so large images were not as big an issue for me. I think the RAW to JPG comparison is a good test.

I've been thinking again about noise reduction as well. I'm not happy with the noise reduction in CS2. I'd be curious to see what people are using for RAW processing too!

Neil Enns
12-11-2006, 04:34 PM
Jason, you've asked about the two greatest pieces of software I own :)

I use Noise Ninja religiously to remove noise from my RAW images. General workflow is to save my RAWs out as 16-bit TIFFs, then Noise Ninja, then into Photoshop for final touchups and sharpening. You can read a reivew of it at Luminous Landscape: http://luminous-landscape.com/reviews/software/noise-ninja.shtml

Similarly, Photokit Sharpener is the best $99 I've *ever* spent. Every single one of my photos winds up going through it before web or print display. I struggled for years to understand unsharp mask, or the settings available in whatever RAW package I was using. There's so much to love about Photokit Sharpener. First, the UI is SIMPLE. You go in, you say exactly what you want to do, and it applies appropriate sharpening. Second, you get so much creative control. One of my favourite things to do is to apply one of the creative sharpening effects, and then very carefully paint on via a layer mask the sharpening in just the specific areas I want. Coupled with dead simple output sharpener (Contone 300 Sharpening must be the most used thing in my Photoshop arsenal!) and you have a recipe for briliant pictures.

To give you an idea of how powerful the two are, I accidentally shot a picture of a branch at 1600 ISO on a bright sunny day. With Noise Ninja and Photokit Sharpener I was able to crop the image, resize in Photoshop, and print as a 24x36" panorama. And then I discovered there was an insect hanging off the leaf that I'd never seen. Incredible.

A review of Photokit Sharpener is available at Luminous Landscape as well, http://luminous-landscape.com/reviews/software/pk-sharpener.shtml

Welcome back!

Neil

Neil Enns
12-11-2006, 04:42 PM
A couple of things to add regarding successful Noise Ninja use:

1) Make sure that it detected the camera profile for the image automatically.

2) Instead of bumping the noise removal to max, try leaving it at the default and instead give it hints about the colours that need the most noise reduction. You can click around on the image in the noisiest parts after clicking on one of the buttons in the removal pane, and that will help it out. I'd tell you exactly where to look in the UI, but I haven't re-installed it yet on my Vista box.

3) Don't be shy about leaving some noise behind, especially in the shadows. I find it helps the image look a little more realistic somehow.

Also, I posted the leaf image I mentioned above. You can view it at http://www.badcasserole.com/leaves.jpg in full size for 300dpi printing. It's about 2.5MB, so be patient.

Neil

kireru
12-11-2006, 07:27 PM
hi

I have great experience from use of the new dxo optics from(dxo.com) which is program that corrects noise,lenssoftness,disortions inn the lens by using scientific meta information(which they have analyzed in every camers body/lens compination).ny also combining this with sensor information they have quit a able way of reducing noise, please give me feedback after you have testet the trial version. great program

ritchie

norway

marlof
12-12-2006, 07:33 PM
Noise Ninja works great, but don't try to blast all noise. It really doesn't hurt for a higher ISO shot to leave some luminance noise, since it's the smoothing of luminance noise that kills detail.

ACR noise reduction is a bit crude, and I just don't use it. I leave the noise in the image, and use Noise Ninja in PS, if really necessary. I try to spend not too much time looking at my images at 100%. I just give it a test print, if it comes out nice, I leave the noise alone. Only if the noise really distracts from the image, I fire up Noise Ninja.

I do like PK Sharpener a lot. Lately I've been sharpening my images less and less, after I spent archiving some of my old prints from my film camera, and I came to the conlusion that I went for too much "pop" in my digital images. I try to keep things smoother now. Usually, I just leave my images unsharpened (or very slightly sharpened), and only sharpen them on printing using Qimage. With all the tools available in my current RAW Converters of choice (Lightroom B4 and Silkypix Developer 3.0), my images hardly ever spend time in PS anymore...

Lee Yuan Sheng
12-13-2006, 01:23 PM
Chroma noise is my biggest enemy. Luminance noise not so much. Try not to remove too much of the latter. ACR's options are decent, but I won't bother with Luminance Smoothing; that really kills the detail.

Jason Dunn
12-14-2006, 09:18 PM
I have great experience from use of the new dxo optics from(dxo.com)...

I installed that program, and after initially finding it confusing (they really need to re-think the workflow UI), I'm really liking it...I'll be posting more about RAW workflow process stuff in the coming weeks. I have a lot to learn and it's a very interesting topic!