[shiner]

Your full screen image requires a Yahoo login.

After the login, you would have discovered that it is a Private Image and you can't view it anyway, lol.

[shiner]

This topic reminds me of a related question: is there a good "affordable" app for processing PEF RAW images out there (on PC)? I'm not completely pleased with the SilkyPix product...

[dylansalt]

For sure - using Noisware Community, especially with 800-1600 iso

The program has a learning alograthim for the camera's noise profile and is never over aggressive.

d

[mut@NT]

I often use chroma noise reduction (in Raw-converter). Rarely - neat image to reduce luminance noise, but I never apply filter to the whole image (noise is usually not visible on textured surfaces so i clean the effects of NR there using history brush). Sometimes I use film grain simulation plugins to add noise/grain.

[Athiril]

Tip When using Adobe Camera RAW (or RAW in Lightroom.. same thing), leave the default value of Colour/Chrominance noise reduction at 25, if its a straight out of camera JPEG at ISO 400 or above, go into it and change it from 0 to 25.

This desaturates the noise, it works perfect and does not subtract detail, do not use the Luminance noise reduction option in ACR, it does not work and makes the picture worse.


Noiseware works very well, and you can make a second layer and scale back the amount with opacity if needed.

Also doing aggressive noise reduction with good software/plugin like Noiseware (where it only kills detail and smooths out but doesnt put in artifacts), do it on a new layer and mask out the infocus areas and only have light reduction on them and heavy reduction on the out of focus areas.

Having noise free oof areas at high iso images (or low noise if you want to keep some) goes a -long- way to the users perception of the over all noise of the image, extremely effective.

[Marc Sabatella]

This topic reminds me of a related question: is there a good "affordable" app for processing PEF RAW images out there (on PC)?

Some good $100-ish options include Photoshop Elements and ACDSee Pro. If you qualify for the educational discount, you can also get Lightroom for around that price. Any of these provide far better workflow than the Pentax software, but output quality is subjective enough that you'll find people arguing for any of them as better than the others. I like ACDSee Pro a lot, but noise reduction is not its strong suit.

There are also free programs out there, like Picasa, but my understanding is that Picasa actually converts your RAW images to JPEG internally first *before* applying any adjustments. Meaning that it does not take advantage of the extra information in the RAW file at all, which in turn means it basically negates the advantage of shooting RAW - assuming my understanding of how it works is correct.

[Sodbuster]

I start having tremendous noise issues with my K200d at ASA 400. I know it isn't supposed to be like that. Now I have fixed the camera at ASA 100. Even then, after applying sharpening (and clarifying far more so) I get noise I have to remove.

Any helpful hints? I've worked with Neat Image, Greystoration and wavelet.

Maybe someday they'll put piezo coolers on the sensors. . .

[OregonJim]

The correct answer would have to be three pages long (because it introduces a satisfactory definition of "image noise" which involves computing a signal/noise over spatial frequency curve). And then you are correct.

The short answer is that everybody confuses "noise" with "random fluctuations of the pixel's rgb values), i.e., "pixel noise".

And this pixel noise is of course reduced. Because you average multiple original pixels into one final one, thereby eliminating most of their fluctuations. The Poisson formula tells you exactly by how much. Quoting a shift in ISO is easier to handle for most people, though.

Ok then, I accept your simplified-for-the-layman terms then. I think we're in agreement.

[RBellavance]

This topic reminds me of a related question: is there a good "affordable" app for processing PEF RAW images out there (on PC)? I'm not completely pleased with the SilkyPix product...

Gimp + UFraw is a pretty powerful combination, for an unbeatable price (free!)

GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program
UFRaw - Home

[Canada_Rockies]

This topic reminds me of a related question: is there a good "affordable" app for processing PEF RAW images out there (on PC)? I'm not completely pleased with the SilkyPix product...

Depending on your definition of "affordable" you can choose PS Elements, which includes the Adobe Raw Converter, about $100.

My personal work flow is

1. DxO Standard for my DA lenses to correcct vignetting, distortion etc. or when I have perspective distortion to fix with other lenses. $150
2. Lightroom for its excellent Library and basic white balance and exposure correction. $300 - for the Mac Aperture is the choice $200
3. PS Elements 6 (7 is now out) for cloning out power lines and such when necessary. $100. Elements includes an organizer, but not up to LR standards. I use it exclusively as an external editor within LR.
4. Back to Lightroom for exporting, printing, etc.

The cheapest uber powerful program is probably GIMP. It's free, does much of what Adobe CS does, and is at least as difficult to use.

I would suggest you buy PS Elements 6 on a budget - it should be on clearance now that v7 is out. If you are or know a student (need number and institution) Adobe does offer healthy educational discounts on most of their products, and Elements 7 might fit your budget. E7 is the top pick on several reviews.

Lightroom, Elements and Creative Suite all use the Adobe raw converter which recognizes PEF files. I have no complaints about conversions. Lightroom modifications are non destructive. Elements over writes the original file unless you save it as a copy.

DxO minuses
DxO can be a bit much. This is a specialist application for people who don't want to do any work in post processing if it can possibly be avoided. It is very slow. With the K10D + DA 12-24, for example, I find 2 images a minute to be the maximum rate of speed on my ThinkPad T60, Centrino Core Duo 1.83 GHz and 3 Gb of RAM running 32 bit XP Pro. DxO puts one image through each of the processors, so that speed [?] is processing 2 images simultaneously to get 2 images a minute through. I just go for lunch and come back occasionally to see where it is in the process. I tested it for a student of mine who uses a Nikon D80 with Nikkor 18-200 VR lens, and the speed was closer to one image a minute. Just watching it on screen, it seemed to be the 18mm end where DxO was flattening out the lighting, removing vignetting and removing the somewhat mustache shaped distortion.

DxO Pluses
What DxO does do is eliminate all the lens + body combination flaws, taking into account the focus distance range, the aperture used, the focal length selected and some other stuff I don't even understand.

DxO also allows me to correct perspective distortions and horizons while it is working. One less thing to do later. Perspective distortions use vertical line pair, horizontal line pair and deformed box to define the needed correction. For a lot less money PT Lens does this as well.

Lightroom Minuses
Lightroom's editing is mostly restricted to cropping, exposure and colour fixes. The healing brush introduced in v2 cannot hold a candle to the same thing in Elements. It costs $300 without a friendly student's help.

Lightroom Pluses
The Library module is about as good as it gets. Keywording is simple. An image can be in any number of Categories at the same time. I can set it so that "Robin" will automatically put the image in "Birds" as well.

The Develop module handles white balance, crop, rotate and colour corrections with very little hassle.

[Marc Sabatella]

I start having tremendous noise issues with my K200d at ASA 400. I know it isn't supposed to be like that. Now I have fixed the camera at ASA 100. Even then, after applying sharpening (and clarifying far more so) I get noise I have to remove.

Any helpful hints?

Can you post some images (unresized crops, preferably) so we can see if what you're seeing is normal or not?

[falconeye]

My personal work flow is

1. DxO [...]
2. Lightroom [...]

I have the same workflow for some of my lenses, esp. the DA 18-250. I found this lens to be usable again if DxO is allowed to preprocess the images.

My question to you: Do you output in 16 Bit compressed TIF? I do but I really hate the increase in file size. Do you know about any alternative?

Unfortunately, DxO cannot write Bayer pattern raw format (linear DNG and compressed TIF are the same, more or less) and LR cannot read JPEG2000

[Canada_Rockies]

I have the same workflow for some of my lenses, esp. the DA 18-250. I found this lens to be usable again if DxO is allowed to preprocess the images.

My question to you: Do you output in 16 Bit compressed TIF? I do but I really hate the increase in file size. Do you know about any alternative?

Unfortunately, DxO cannot write Bayer pattern raw format (linear DNG and compressed TIF are the same, more or less) and LR cannot read JPEG2000

I am outputting DxO DNG files. They are largish, but the results are worth it to me. My solution to the problem is LaCie USB 500 Gb drives. About 6,000 images on my current drive take up about 1/3 the available space, including LaCie backups. I also have available 3,000 Gb of on line storage through a 1and1 account.

[falconeye]

I am outputting DxO DNG files.

Thanks. I actually switched to DNG as well. Same data as TIFF, but better white balance info.

The DNG are this large because Adobe allows DNG to either be Bayer pattern RAW image data, or linear RGB image data just like TIFF. DxO outputs the latter.

Unfortunately, so far I've found no image converter which would convert into the DNG Bayer pattern RAW image format. Because the image was created from one, the loss of information in doing so should be acceptable. Files would only be 1/4 the size.

Also, I found that JPEG2000 is virtually lossless at this size (it is exactly lossless at 1/2 the DNG size). But for whatever reason, Adobe is one of the few image software companies not reading or writing JPEG2000.

You're right, big disks make the DxO approach feasible.

[Marc Sabatella]

Unfortunately, so far I've found no image converter which would convert into the DNG Bayer pattern RAW image format.

That's what the free Adobe DNG Converter does. I think the Pentax software can do this too? Or do you mean, starting from TIFF or some other RGB format? That would seem patently impossible - the original RAW data is already gone. I suppose your could reverse engineer something that would sort of work, but I'm not sure what advantage there would be. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding completely.