Originally posted by GregK8 I am about to embark on the process of creating a noise profile for my K20D to use with Noise Ninja, but I'm a little confused.
Do you need to have a different noise profile for each iso setting?
I've downloaded and printed the calibration chart from from Picturecode's website, and I have a nice spot to take the picture that is very evenly lit.
One other thing, I believe the image is supposed to be slightly out of focus when you make the exposure, yes? Does this really have an effect.
I love color profiles, they are a powerful noise reduction tool that looks at your K20D and sees the noise pattern in different colors and makes Noise Ninja very precise and effective, with minimal detail loss. The lens does not matter, making the pic slightly blurred does. If you take a sharp pic of the printed color chart you 'may' see the texture of the print/paper and Noise Ninja may see this as well and think its noise... blur it away so Noise Ninja only sees the noise in the colors.
Now are you a JPEG or RAW or both shooter? In all cases you need a profile for every single ISO, because each ISO has different noise levels in the colors
if you convert a RAW file to a 16bit TIFF and let Noise Ninja analyze it, it should apply a strong NR algorithm and high sharpening like 130/2/0. It will automatically call and or label these files RAW files. Read the directions as you make your first few profiles and it tells how to automatically fill in the data, from the pics EXIF info (its one press of a button and super easy to do).
For JPEG PP you need to do a profile for every ISO and every custom setting, as in sharpness, contrast... as all of these affect noise! Yep if you shoot in natural sometimes and bright others you need profiles for both
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Now one day not so long ago I thought to myself the directions don't say how much light to do the profiles in, and the K20D has different amounts of noise depending on the light. It would seem if you shoot in a lower light than the profile was made in, it should still see the noise pattern, but the K20D has a different noise pattern in low light, it gets those blue specks all over in dark areas and you need to catch those
OK now I recommend you make profiles in the light you were going to in JPEG and TIFF if you shoot RAW, and at every ISO or at least the one stop ISOs 200,400,800... and try to do another in low light so low you have to manually focus and use those profiles for, low light
Its so easy its not funny, the hardest part is taking the pics. Once you take the pics you open one at a time in Noise Ninja and hit the Profile Chart button and follow the directions.
Last I have 3 sets of profiles for the K20D and one for low light that works pretty good at taking out the blue specks email me and I will send them to you. I have sent them to many. But since your ready to make your profiles I would give it a go, as it would be better you never know your K20D may be slightly different with noise than mine, well at least you will learn. Or just give me an email.