Which do you think does a better job at noise reduction?

[hwblanks]

To see if spending more money on yet another computer program to handle noise (or even justifying getting a K20), as opposed to correcting it in LR, I did a little test comparison...all were taken at ISO1600 on my K10D

The original...the noise is pretty obvious


Processed in Neat Image


Processed in Noise Ninja


Processed in Lightroom--I tried to recreate the K10D ISO1600 profile settings found both in NN and NI


Which one do you think is better?
Thanks!
Heather

[Canada_Rockies]

For me, the colours went off with the other two. The sharpening loss seems to be about the same across the three, and the colours could be muted in PP as well.

[MrApollinax]

I use (and recomend) Noiseware. I've attahced your original image processed by noiseware (it took .67 seconds to process). The proversion will allow for batch processing as well.

[hwblanks]

Not bad...I tried noiseware on another image and here's what I came up with...note that I used the default setting.

The original...


Noise reduction with Noiseware


One thing that I like about Noiseware is it seems to be a bit more intuitive than Noise Ninja or Neat Image. I've got the free Community Edition downloaded, but if I go this route, I'll upgrade to the Standard Edition so I can export my images back to LR as TIFFs. If a $30 program can do just as well as a $70 program, then I'd rather save the money and go with the $30 program.

Heather

[deejjjaaaa]

Originally Posted by hwblanks

To see if spending more money on yet another computer program to handle noise (or even justifying getting a K20), as opposed to correcting it in LR, I did a little test comparison...all were taken at ISO1600 on my K10D

The original...the noise is pretty obvious


Processed in Neat Image


Processed in Noise Ninja


Processed in Lightroom--I tried to recreate the K10D ISO1600 profile settings found both in NN and NI


Which one do you think is better?
Thanks!
Heather

I think that it is useless to compare default (I guess, if not - then why do you think that managed to get the best out of both ?) settings of NN & NI on just one image... and then there are free programs like GREYCstoration :
http://cimg.sourceforge.net/greycstoration/download.shtml

[Damn Brit]

This may be a silly question Heather but....why were you shooting at ISO 1600? I don't think I've shot higher than ISO 800 (and that was the cameras decision, I shoot mostly in TAV mode).
Gary

[amoringello]

Have to ask,did Lightroom do anything at all? I think its job is abismal.
Noiseware looks prety good but hard to tell on all of these due to some jpeg compression. A link to TIFFs might make for a better comparison.

[raz-0]

Well, noise ninja removed too much detail and caused too much color shift (although that could be operator error on the color part).

I think neat image removed both chroma and luminance noise the best.

I think lightroom did chroma noise reduction the best, but left most of the luminance noise.

Personally I like the results you CAN get with neatimage the best. I do not like their K10 defaults at all and usually get slightly better results with auto and much better results with manually tweaking NI per-image.

Honestly, CS2 and CS3 perform well enough for me for noise reduction. I only purchased a plug-in due to a better interface that lets me see a better, more accurate, more tweakable preview.

[hwblanks]

Normally, I don't shoot at ISO1600, but I decided to use it for these test images to maximize noise. Ordinarily, I try not to go over ISO400 if I can help it, owing to the K10's reputation for noise.

The main reason I'm looking for another noise reduction program is that I'm not crazy about LR's NR abilities. If I can find one that does a reasonably good job and doesn't cost a small fortune, then I can hold off a bit longer on going after a K20.

Heather